Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 26th of August 2020

Case name: 2020_08_26-WM478
Situation: 14 travellers started from Algeria, reached Spain
Status of WTM Investigation: concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:
On 26h of August at 20:56h CEST the Alarm Phone was called by a relative which handed over a telephone number of someone on a boat. The number was not available. After more communication with the relative we could gather the following information: 10 people left the day before around 4am in the morning. At 22:01h the shift team received a call from the boat. A woman asked for help but couldn’t transfer a GPS position, which was provided 50 minutes later, also that they are 14 people, among them 4 women and 9 children and that they started from Mostaganem, Algeria. Soon after we called Salvamento Maritimo (SM) in Almeria and handed over all information and wrote an email. Around midnight we received another GPS position which we shared with SM Almeria. They advised us to inform the travellers to call 112. Unfortunately, we lost contact. Only at 02:23h CEST on 27th of August we reestablished contact. The women told us the people were tired and stressed and nobody arrived yet. At around 3h we observed the vessel Salvamar Mimosa heading towards the GPS position. 1,5 hours later we received a new GPS position, but SM Almeria wasn’t reachable on the phone, so we wrote an email. We called Guardia Civil at 07:45h who confirmed an ongoing search and rescue operation. As they were many boats crossing to Spain the authorities were busy and couldn’t confirm us anything. At 18:00h we had a long talk to SM Madrid who explained to us that many boats had arrived on their own. We consider the case as closed.