Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 1st of October 2020

Case name: 20201001-CM305

Situation: Two cases: a boat with 84 people on board departed in Libya and arrived on Lampedusa autonomously as well as the second boat coming from Zuwara with 100 people

Status of WTM Investigation: concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases:

On 1st of October 2020 Alarm Phone was called by two boats with together 184 people heading towards Lampedusa. Although authorities were informed both boats were not rescued but arrived on their own on 2nd of October.

Case one:
In the afternoon of October 1, 2020, the Alarm Phone was called by a boat in distress travelling from Libya to Lampedusa. Among the 84 people on board there were 5 children and 8 women, some of them pregnant. Water was entering the boat and some people on board were sick. We got a GPS-position which we then emailed to the authorities of Italy and Malta at 19.00h CEST and also called them, but only Italy was reachable and took note of our information. The position of the boat was already close to Lampedusa. We stayed in contact with the people on board for part of the night and forwarded updates of their position to the authorities. Since October 2, 2020, 01.45h CEST the phone of the people on board was not reachable any more. The next morning at 10.00h CEST we got information from a journalist that the boat had arrived on Lampedusa at night at 2.00h CEST.

Case two:
On the 1st of October at 21:45h CEST the Alarm Phone got called by a satellite phone. The connection was very bad, they told to be around 100 people on a blue wooden boat. The call broke. The shift team tried to reconnect to the travellers. At 22:12h a GPS position could be transferred, which located the boat in Maltese search and rescue zone Northwest of Lampedusa. The travellers told to have departed from Zuwara and were from Bangladesh, Morroco and other African countries. At 22:36h an email was sent to MRCC Rome, RCC Malta as well to Sea Watch airborne operation. Between 22:40h and 00:01h on 2nd of October the travellers called often in a desperate manner. They provided the shift team with GPS positions which were all forwarded to the competent authorities. Then contact to the travellers got los, nevertheless the Alarm Phone called them every hour in the early hours of 2nd October.

In the evening of 2nd October, 2020, the Alarm Phone learned about the arrival of the boat on Lampedusa.