Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th May 2021
Case name: 2021_05_28-CM449
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to a group of 14 travellers. After three days at sea they were finally rescued and brought to Lampedusa.
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean
Summary of the case:
On Friday the 28th of May 2021 in the afternoon, we received a call directly from a boat in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. Onboard the boat were 14 travellers, including two women and two children. The travellers told us that they had been at sea for three days and were heading for Lampedusa. We could hear in the background that their engine was still running. Due to bad connection we were never able to establish the location of the travellers, nor from where they had departed. Despite having little information, we alerted the relevant rescue authorities at 17.03 CEST, forwarding all information we had. We were never able to reestablish contact to the travellers. After sending the email, we called the relevant coastguards. The Tunisian coastguard promised that they would try to localise the boat, whereas the Italian coastguard only confirmed that they had received our information but refused to give us any further information. The Maltese and so-called Libyan coastguards didn’t answer our calls, despite many attempts to reach them. At 20.08 CEST we called the Tunisian coastguard again, and they told us that they had not been able to locate the boat. The Italian coastguard was still not willing to give us any information about ongoing search and rescue efforts. Later in the evening we were informed that a boat matching our description had been rescued to Lampedusa. We were not able to confirm directly with the group of travellers that they had arrived safely to Lampedusa, but based on the information we obtained about the group that arrived we assume that the people who arrived to Lampedusa belonged to the boat we were alerted to.