Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 26th April 2022

Case name: 2022_04_26-ATL041

Situation: 51 travellers in distress in the Atlantic Sea, made it back to Morocco by themselves.

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Atlantic Sea

Summary of the case: On Tuesday the 26th of April 2022, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a relative to a group of 51 travellers, including nine women and two children, in distress in the Atlantic Sea. The travellers had left from around Tarfaya in the early hours of the morning on a grey rubber boat. We managed to reach the travellers who sounded very distressed and told us that their engine had broken down more than six hours earlier. They told us that they were not wearing life jackets, that their boat had started losing air and that the waves were high and the wind strong. Despite their distress, the travellers managed to give us their GPS position, and we immediately relayed all the information we had to the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo. We stayed in contact with the travellers and forwarded their updated GPS positions to the relevant authorities when possible. We learned from the Moroccan rescue authorities that the Moroccan navy was searching with a vessel in the area, but the travellers continued to inform us that they could not see a vessel in the vicinity. In the early hours of the morning of the next day we lost contact to the travellers. We stayed in contact with the Moroccan rescue authorities who continued their search, but only the following afternoon did we learn from a relative that the travellers had managed to make it back to the Moroccan shore by themselves.


Tweets about the case: https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1519037742184898561