Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 23rd May 2021
Case name: 2021_05_23-CM445
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 100 people in distress in a storm. After many hours they were finally rescued and brought to Tunisia.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case:
On Sunday the 23rd of May 2021, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea, carrying 100 people, 81 men, 10 women and nine children. The travellers had left Sabratha at 01.00 CEST the same day on a white rubber boat. For a while we were not able to establish direct contact to the travellers. At 12.03 CEST we sent an email to all relevant rescue authorities, alerting them to the distress of the travellers, stressing that weather conditions were bad in the area and wind forecasted to increase. At 12.50 CEST we reached the travellers for the first time. They told us that they were still moving, and we could hear the sound of their engine in the background. At 13.34 CEST we spoke to the so-called Libyan coastguard, who told us that they needed the GPS position before they would start a search operation for the boat. We tried during many calls to get their GPS position, but due to bad connection and their lack of knowledge about how to operate the satellite phone this was very difficult. At 16.34 CEST we sent another email to the authorities stressing the urgency of the situation and urging them to search for the boat even without knowing the exact position, as they could estimate the area the boat would be in with the information about time and place of departure. Finally, at 20.00 CEST we managed to get a position from the boat which we immediately forwarded to all authorities. In addition, the travellers told us that water was entering their boat. Online, we could see that two merchant vessels in the area were going in a search pattern close to the position we had sent to the authorities. We therefore sent an email to each of the companies, urging them to rescue the travellers and reminding them of their duty to disembark the travellers in a port of safety. At 08.55 CEST the so-called Libyan coastguard confirmed to us on the phone that these two merchant vessels were involved in the search and rescue operation of the boat in distress. In a call to the Tunisian coastguard at 15.56 CEST they informed us that the merchant vessel Sea Loyalty had been ordered to carry out the rescue operation, but that they had refused as they claimed there were safety issues as their vessel was a petrol tanker. Instead, they were standing by until the Tunisian coastguard could send a rescue vessel. At 18.03 CEST the Tunisian coastguard confirmed that they had rescued the 100 people who were all safe and being brought to Tunisia.
Throughout the distress case, we made the public aware through the following tweets