Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 19th of August 2016

Case name: 2016_08_19-WM115
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 10 travellers in distress in Western Med, rescued to Spain
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Friday, the 19th of August 2016 at 6.20am, the Alarm Phone received a call from Morocco and was informed about a boat that had left Tangier 5 hours earlier in the direction of Spain. The contact person forwarded the phone number of the boat to us and told us about 5 men, 4 women (including one pregnant) and a baby on board. We reached the travellers at 6.35am and were asked to call the Spanish coastguard, because water was entering their boat. At 6.50am, we alerted the Spanish rescue organization Salvamento Marítimo (S.M.) in Madrid and forwarded all information we had obtained to them. At 7.12am, we called the travellers again. They were still on the boat, but were able to see the lights of the Spanish coast and two vessels nearby, one of them a rescue vessel. At 7.25am, we sent an email to S.M., the UNHCR and to the Spanish refugee council CEAR, providing them with all our information in written form. At 7.39am, we observed that the Spanish rescue vessel GUARDAMAR C.ARENAL had changed its course at about 7am and again at 7.30am and was heading back in the direction of Tarifa. At 7.45am, we called S.M. again and received the confirmation that they had found the boat in distress and rescued the travellers on board. They were on their way back to Tarifa/Spain. At 7.55am, we informed the contact person about the rescue of the boat. He thanked us a lot. At 10.30am an activist from Spain posted on Twitter, that a boat in distress had been rescued and brought to Tarifa on this day, with 9 adults on board. It is most probably that this tweet was referring to the boat the Alarm Phone had been in contact with.