Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th March 2021
Case name: 2021_03_28-CM391
Situation: 85 travellers from Zuwara rescued by Open Arms.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: In the night of Sunday the 28th of May the Alarm Phone was alerted by a relative of one of the travellers, to a boat in distress carrying approximately 80 people, all men. The boat was a blue wooden boat and it had left from Zuwara the previous night. The relative who phoned us had lost contact with the travellers at 15:53h CEST, also the time stamp of the last GPS position he had received. After trying to establish contact with the travellers several times, at 01:56h of the 29th of March we sent an email alerting the Italian and Maltese coastguards, as well as the NGO boat Open Arms. During the rest of the night, we continuously tried to reach the travellers but with no success. The following morning our shift team called the Italian
coastguard asking about possible rescue operations, however they refused to give us information. At 10:52 we spoke to the relative of one of the travellers who told us that he had spoken to the people on board who were panicking, the engine was no longer working. He also passed us the GPS coordinates he managed to obtain. A few minutes later he called us back informing us that the travellers could see an airplane above them. We immediately passed on this information to the Italian coastguard and to Open Arms. Sometime later we were copied in two emails from Open Arms to the Italian coastguards confirming that they had found two boats in distress very close to the last position of our case. One was a wooden boat carrying around 85 travellers including 7 women and 2 children, we believe that this was our case. Open Arms finally proceeded to rescue both boats.