Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 30th March 2021

Case name: 2021_03_30-CM396

Situation: 85 people, including 4 pregnant women and 5 children on a boat close to Lampedusa were in urgent need of rescue after water started entering their boat. Authorities did not cooperate.

Status of WTM Investigation: open

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case:

During the night of March 30th Alarm Phone was alerted by a boat with 85 people in the Maltese SAR zone. There were 4 pregnant women and 5 children among them and they probably left Libya two days ago.

They were exhausted and asking for help and rescue. We alerted authorities at 01:57 CEST, 30th of March about the boat and told them that the people were in urgent need of rescue. Since we got no response, we sent another Email with an updated GPS-position at 02:19 CEST, informing authorities, that water was entering the boat. Furthermore, we asked for a confirmation about which authority will take responsibility for the case. We also called authorities in Lampedusa and Rome, but they pretended not to speak English and refused to talk to us about anything else but a confirmation about our Email. We called RCC Malta several times, but no one picked up the phone.

At 04:37 CEST we sent another Email to ask who was responsible and when they would send out a boat for their rescue, but we didn’t get any response. We kept contact with the people on board the whole time to make sure, they were okay. They gave us an updated GPS-Position at 08:30 CEST, which we immediately emailed to MRCC Rome, RCC Malta and the Coast Guards.

The people on board had lost orientation while water was entering their boat. They were in urgent need of rescue and especially the four pregnant women and the children were tired and suffering.

We sent another Email to the authorities at 09:12 CEST, explaining the difficult situation for the pregnant women and children.

At 10:18 CEST the people on board told us, that they could see a white boat approaching them but they were not sure, who it was. The connection broke and we could not reach them anymore after this. But coordinates showed that they were already north of Lampedusa, so we truly hope it was the Italian Coast Guard and the people have been brought to safety.

Twitter chronology:

https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1376801764691865604?s=20