Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th of May 2016

Case name: 2016_05_28-WM94
Situation: Alarm Phone called from boat in Western Med, with 11 people on board; rescued by Spanish Salvamento Marítimo
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Saturday the 28th of May 2016 at 7.27am, the Alarm Phone was directly called from a boat that had left from Tangier/Morocco 3 hours earlier. There were 11 travellers on board, amongst them one child. They asked us to call the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Marítimo, but as they were not in immediate distress, we agreed that they would continue their journey and call us back later. 30 minutes later, we talked again to the travellers. They were still rather calm and told us that they had continued their journey. We promised to call them back half an hour later. However, in the following hour, we were not able to reach them again, although their phone seemed to be working. Thus, at 9am, we decided to alert the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Marítimo (S.M.). We called their office in Tarifa/Spain and forwarded all the information we had. We were told that S.M. had just started a rescue operation in the region, probably of the boat that had called us. At 9.11am, we called the travellers again and they confirmed to us that they had been rescued by S.M. We forwarded a link to the Welcome to Europe guide for Spain to them.