Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 13th of September 2022

Case name: 2022_09_13-ATL105

Situation: 25 people in distress in the Atlantic sea, rescued by Salvamento Maritimo to Las Palmas

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Atlantic Ocean

Summary of the Case: On Tuesday the 13th of September 2022, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted in the late evening by a relative to a group of 25 travelers, including 3 women and some children, in distress in the Atlantic Ocean. The travelers had left the evening before at around 23.00 CEST from Boujdour towards the Canaries on a green zodiac. After we managed to establish a direct contact to the people on boat, we received their current GPS position at 01:49 CEST the 14th of September. Afterwards the given information about the boat were directly relayed to the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo at 2:06 am CEST. They confirmed the reception of the alert E-mail in a phone call. In the following hours we were not able to reach the travelers again. Only hours later at 06:53 CEST we established a connection again to the people on the boat and were told that they could see one red vessel with a lot of lights. They were out of food and only had some life jackets on board. They also forwarded us their current GPS position which we forwarded via E-Mail to Salvamento Maritimo at 07:04 CEST. During the phone call the person on the phone saw another boat. The shift team called again Salvamento Maritimo and they stated to have localized the boat now and that they were launching a rescue operation. In the morning of the 14th of September (at 10:30 CEST) Salvamento Maritimo confirmed to us on the phone that the rescue operation was successful and that the people on the boat were brought to Las Palmas. We informed the relative who had alerted us.