Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of December 2015

Case name: 2015_12_25-CM53
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to two boats in distress in the Central Mediterranean Sea, rescue confirmed
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On the 25th of December 2015, our Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by Father Mussie Zerai to two distress cases in the Central Mediterranean Sea. On this day, a total of 751 people were rescued in that area in six rescue operations (see source 1).

At 7.05am Father Zerai sent us information about two vessels in distress. The first one carried 100 people, including 6 women (some of whom were pregnant) who had left Libya seven hours earlier. About 200 people were on the second vessel. While both groups of travellers had satellite phones with them, GPS coordinates were, at first, given only for the first vessel which was located North of Al Khums, eastern city from Tripoli. Later on Father Zerai obtained also the GPS position of the second vessel, north of Zuwara in west Libya.

With the satellite phone numbers we could see how much credit the travellers had left. Although we did not speak to them directly, the passengers of both vessels clearly used their phones as their credit went down and so we re-charged both of them, allowing them to continue making calls. We informed Father Zerai that we would monitor the phones and add credit again if needed.

For many hours it was unclear whether the travellers had been found and rescued or not. On the next day, at about 10am, we could receive confirmation about the rescue of vessel 1. The confirmation of the second vessel’s rescue came in on the following day, in the afternoon.