Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 4th February 2021
Case name: 2021_02_04-CM357
Situation: 70 people rescued to Lampedusa, one person died
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:
Shortly after 22:00h CET, 4 February 21 we were called by a boat in distress.The re were 74 people on board, including one woman. They gave us their position and told us to call the coastguard. They were in an extremely precarious position. Many of the passengers were close to or in a critical condition.

We passed on the information by email to the Italian and Maltese authorities. We followed up with a phone call to RCC Malta, as the competent authority, who, unusually, answered
their phone. They took the information but refused to confirm or deny that they would be launching a rescue operation.

At 23:15h we received a phone call from somebody whose brother was on the boat. He told us that his brother had died and that people were in a desperate situation. We relayed the information to the authorities and begged them to give us an ETA so
that we could reassure the people in distress by letting them know that help was coming. But we received no response and so we put out a target="_blank">tweet:
SOS! ~74 people at risk of drowning!
The Alarm Phone was alerted to another boat fleeing Libya, carrying about 74 people on board. They are in panic and say that water is entering their boat! We have informed authorities and demand the immediate launch of a rescue operation!

At about 23:50 we called RCC Malta again, but they fobbed us off and would not give us any information about any search and rescue
operation. Instead they demanded information about lifejackets and the state of the engine. We called the boat back who could not
understand why we were asking such trivial details when they were in clear distress. They did tell us that they had no lifejackets and that they were drifting. They also asked us if we were waiting for them to die. We relayed the information to Malta by email and a follow-up phone call, but they still would give us information about their activities. As Open Arms’ vessel, Astral was within 20
nautical miles of the last known position, we included them our email correspondence.

Until 02:33h we were able to maintain contact with the boat and pass onupdated positions to the authorities and to Open Arms. We could not get any positive information from RCC Malta about what they were doing, despite phone calls throughout the night.

At 06:18h Open Arms wrote to us to ask for more information, but we had no more current position and the one we had already sent to them. We continued trying to contact the boat throughout the morning of 5 February, but we had no success. The authorities remained
tightlipped. At 10:51 we put out the following href="https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1357627560729989121" target="_blank">tweet:
We lost contact to the boat many hours ago and don't know how the ~74 people are. We hope they survived the night. The Italian authorities state that this boat is Malta's responsibility. Stop playing with people's lives!

At around 14:00 we learnt from journalists on Twitter that the boat matching our description had been rescued by the Italian authorities to Lampedusa. We later learned that Open Arms had found the empty vessel. Boza, welcome to Europe, but when will the authorities stop playing with people’s lives?