Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 30th of March 2016

Case name: 2016_03_30-CM56
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to one distress cases in the Central Mediterranean Sea, near Tripoli
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Wednesday, the 30th of March 2016, Alarm Phone was alerted to one distress case in the Central Mediterranean Sea. At 8.50am, we were informed by father Mussie Zerai about a plastic boat with 80 passengers in distress off the Libyan coast.
The Italian Coastguard was already informed. At 9am, we spoke to one of the travellers, but could not communicate due to langue problems. We organized a translator, who called the travellers back shortly after 9am. At 9.44, the translator informed us that among the 80 travellers were mainly women, four of whom pregnant and six children. They had left Tripoli at 2.00am local time. They called, because they were facing high waves and were afraid that the engine would not last. At quarter past ten, we passed on the new information to the Italian Coastguard. We asked whether they had sent rescue boats. The officer on duty replied that they had sent boats, but that they would take about 3 to 4 hours to reach the people. However, it remained unclear to us, whether the Coastguard actually had the position of the boat or not. The travellers had told us that they did not know how to retrieve their own GPS position. We kept in touch with them and explained how to look for a GPS position. At 10.24 the travellers sent us a GPS position, according to which they had travelled backwards. The coordinates showed them about 45km from the Libyan shore. At 10.33am we sent an e-mail about the case to the Coastguard, the UNHCR and other actors involved. A few minutes later, we received updated coordinates both from the translator and from father Zerai, which we passed on to the Coastguard. At 11.58am, we talked to the translator again, who kept in regular contact with the travellers. He told us that the travellers were anxiously waiting for the Coastguard to arrive, as water was entering the boat. At noon, we spoke to the Italian Coastguard again. They did not have any new information on the rescue operation and told us to call back one hour later. At 12.13pm we received an e-mail from father Zerai with new coordinates - showing the boat west of their last position - and an urgent distress call: water kept entering the boat as the boat was shaken by an agitated sea. We called the Italian Coastguard again to be sure that father Zerai's latest distress call had reached them as well. The Coastguard officer suspected that the winds were pushing the boat to the west. Again, they asked us to call them back in an hour for an update. At 12.38pm we recharged the Thuraya satellite telephone of the travellers, as their credit had dropped. At 1.15pm, we called the Italian Coastguard again, but could not supply them with new coordinates. We asked them whether there were really boats underway, as we could not spot them on marinetraffic. At 1.39, the translator sent us the boat's latest coordinates, which showed the boat a lot further north, a distance that the boat was unlikely to have covered. The travellers told the translator that they could see a boat approaching them and asked whether this boat was from the Italian Coastguard. We did not know, as we could not locate any Coastguard boards in the area on vesselfinder or marinetraffic. At 1.50pm we recharged the traveller's satellite phone again and called the Italian Coastguard with the coordinates. The officer on duty shared our scepticism about the coordinates. He told us that they had one boat approaching the area from the South and another form the North, so that they should be able to spot the boat. At 2pm and at 3pm, we re-charged the travellers' Thuraya account, as we could see that their credit was dropping. However, we did not have any news from them.
The translator had trouble joining the travellers, as he had run out of credit and when we tried to reach out to them at 3.55pm, an automatic voice said that the phone we were trying to reach was not available at the moment. The phones credit remained steady, so apparently they did not use the phone anymore. We kept trying to reach them, but without success. At 5.25pm, we called the Italian Coastguard. They told us that they had found the boat and confirmed that all passengers were safe. We passed on f information to the translator and other people involved. About an hour later, we also saw that the Italian Coastguard had sent a Twitter message that they had rescued 82 persons.