Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 27th September 2021

Case name: 2021_09_27-CM577

Situation: 70 travellers in urgent distress in the Central Med left unassisted for more than 24 hours before finally being rescued and brought to Lampedusa.

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the case: On Monday the 27th of September 2021, the Alarm Phone shift team received a direct call from a group of 70 travellers in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea. The travellers had left two days earlier from around Al-Khoms, heading towards Malta. They were travelling on a white rubber boat and told us that water was entering the boat. At 10.31 CEST we sent an email to all relevant rescue authorities, passing on all the information we had about the distress case, including the GPS position of the boat showing that they were within the Maltese search and rescue zone. We then called the Maltese coastguard who confirmed that they had received the information and were attempting to reach the travellers. In our next conversation with the travellers at 11.13 CEST they confirmed that they had spoken to the Maltese coastguard. We stayed in contact with the travellers and were ably to relay their updated GPS positions to the rescue authorities. As the weather in the region was getting increasingly bad, our concern for the safety of the travellers grew and the travellers themselves became more and more desperate. We urged all rescue authorities to take the necessary steps, and pointed out to them two fishing vessels in the vicinity which could be called upon to provide assistance. In the meantime, the travellers were running out of both fuel and battery on their satellite phone and they told us that “no one will survive the night. While trying to reach the travellers and get information from the coastguard, we also reached out to the shipping company of a nearby merchant vessel, asking for assistance for the travellers. Throughout the night the phone of the travellers was mostly not reachable, but at 05.20 CEST we managed to get their updated position, which we immediately forwarded to all rescue authorities with the demand that a search and rescue should be launched. After this, we never managed to reach the travellers again.

Neither Maltese nor Italian authorities ever answered our many requests about the fate of the travellers. Only later did we learn from people on the ground that the travellers had in fact been rescued and brought to Lampedusa.

Tweets about the case: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1442410569382776835?lang=de