Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – November 12th 2020

Case name: 2020_11_12-CM329

Situation: 89 people rescued to Lampedusa

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Position : 34.86022, 12.64208

Summary

In the evening of November 12th Alarmphone was alerted to a boat in distress carrying 89 people including nine women and five children. At the time of the alert the people on the boat informed us they had neither food, water, no life vests on board and were urgently asking for support. We received a GPS position which we forwarded to authorities at 20.17 CET. We called authorities in Rome, who deffered us to Malta since the distress case was in their search and rescue zone. After several calls to authorities in Malta an operator confirmed the reception of our e-mail and informed us that they already knew about this case. They refused to inform us of their estimated time of arrival to the distress case. In the course of the night, people on the boat informed us their engigne had stopped working and water had started entering the boat. Our calls to authorities in Malta remained unanswered throughout the night. We received several updated GPS positions which were forwarded to authorities.

At 08.06 CET people on the boat called us again, relating that a lot of water had entered the boat, people were panicking and urgently asking for support. Upon calling authorities in Rome we were refused any information on a potentially ongoing rescue operation. Later on that day we learnt that the 89 people had been rescued and brought to Lampedusa.

Twitter Chronology

November 12th

21.08 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1326979973526282241?s=12

November 13th

08.38 CET https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1327153754064498690