Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 12th of February 2020
Case name: 2020_02_12-WM452
Situation: 31 travellers rescued by Salvamento Marítimo to Las Palmas, Spain
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:
On 12 February 2020 at 21.09h CET we were contacted about a boat which we were told had 31 travellers on board - 17 men, 10 women (one 8 months pregnant), and four children including one baby. The relative who contacted us had been in contact with one of the travellers on board two days before on the 10th February but the line had broken down before they were able to pass on co-ordinates of their location. The relative thought that the boat had left from somewhere close to Laayune, Western Sahara.
We tried to contact the travellers using the number passed to us from the time we received this news until 13.03h on 13 February but were unable to make contact.

At 17.00h later that day we were contacted by another relative about the same travellers. The second relative told us that that boat had left from Dakhla, Morocco on 11 February at 15.00h Moroccan time. We began trying to phone the same number again which had been given to us by both relatives who had got in contact but had no success.

At 18.50h the shift team tried to call the regional office of the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Marítimo (SM) in Las Palmas but were unable to get through.

The shift team successfully got through to them at 20.57h and were asked to send an email with our request which was done following the conversation.

At 21.23h the team received another phone call from a third person asking after other relatives on this same boat. Unfortunately we had no news for them.

At 22.50h we called SM Las Palmas again who told us they had rescued two boats, but they did not give us any further information so we were unable to verify whether either of the boats rescued were the travellers we had been contacted about.

At 01.55h on 14 February we spoke to SM Las Palmas again who told us that the travellers they had rescued would be arriving at the port at around 03.00h, and they would be able to tell us then whether either of the rescues matched the people we had been contacted about.

At 03.01h we received a message from the first person who had contacted us telling us that she had heard the news that the travellers had been rescued and that the pregnant woman had given birth on the boat.

At 03.02h SM Las Palmas called us again to inform us they had rescued a third boat. They told us that a woman on the boat had given birth when rescued, and the rescue seemed to match. We passed this news from SM
Las Palmas on to the relatives who had contacted us.

On 14 February at 09.39h another of the relatives got back in contact with us to let us know that they had also had confirmation that these travellers had arrived safely. At 10.19h the same news came again from the third relative who had contacted us. BOZA.