Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 20th of March 2020
Case name: 2020_02_09-WM458
Situation: 21 people left form Dakhla, rescued to Canaries
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

At 01.18h Watch the Med Alarm Phone was alerted to a case of 21 men, who had left Dakhla in the early morning of March 19th 2020. The boat was blue, with a white Yamaha motor. Throughout the morning of March 20th, Alarm Phone was unable to reestablish contact to the boat. At 11.50h authorities on the Canary Islands were contacted. The officer insisted that Alarm Phone should call Guardia Civil instead, but mentioned an ongoing operation of rescue. Indeed, information online confirmed a vessle of Salvamento Maritimo had left from Las Palmas, heading South. At 13.07h Alarm Phone contacted Salvamento Maritimo, forwarding all information on the case, requesting a second rescue operation to be launched in case. The information provided by Alarm Phone did not match the situation the search and rescue vessel was heading out for. At 13.30h Alarm Phone called the Regional Coordination Centre, Guardia Civil. The officer said, the ongoing search concerned a boat that had left on March 18th 2020, carrying 18 people; the officer did not provide further information. At 13.47h an e-mail was sent, summarising the information about the case of 21 people who had left Dakhla on March 19th. At 14.40h an officer at Guardia Civil called the Alarm Phone, confirming that a blue boat and white, wooden boat carrying 21 people had been rescued. Nationalities of people on boat were from Sub-Saharan Africa. The officer suggested this boat was the same boat Alarm Phone had received information on. Eventually, a family member of a person of the boat confirmed the rescue.