Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th of February 2021

Case name: 2021_28_02-CM381

Situation: 90 people started from Zuwara and called Alarm Phone when they were in Maltese SAR zone, RCC Malta denied responsibility and only after pressure by Sea-Watch who gave assistance to the travellers the Italian Coastguard brought them to Lampedusa

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:

On 28th of February 2021 in the evening the Alarm Phone received a distress call from a satellite phone. The caller transferred a GPS position to the shift team, the boat was located in Maltese waters. The line broke down. When they call again 20 minutes later they gave more information: they were 90 people who started from Zuwara in the evening of 26th February in a white rubber boat, onboard were 14 children and the weather was bad. They asked for help as several people were sea sick. Shortly after we sent an email to RCC Malta and MRCC Rome as well as to the NGO Sea-Watch who was involved in various rescue missions and had over 300 guests onboard already. We tried to confirm the reception of our email but RCC Malta wasn’t reachable. Only Sea-Watch responded to our distress email and promised assistance. Later Sea-Watch stated in an email that both authorities in Italy and Malta denied responsibility and proper support. When the travellers called us again at 20:43h CET they said to have seen a helicopter, which means that the authorities knew about the GPS position. Nevertheless we transferred all information we got from the travellers in the next hours to the competent authorities. Our last call to the people onboard were at 22:36h CET, the caller said they see two lights.

Sea-Watch informed us in the first minutes of 29th of February that they have launched the RHIBs to provide first assistance but they weren't able to embark more people. When we called MRCC Rome at 07.13h CET they didn’t want to give us information. Later that day, we learned by a tweet of Sea-Watch that after a long time of non-assistance the Italian Coastguard finally had rescued the people and brought them to Lampedusa.