Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 21st of August 2016

Case name: 2016_08_21-CM79
Situation: Alarm Phone directly called by 100 travellers in distress in Central Med, rescued by Italian military vessel
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Sunday, the 21st of August 2016 at 9.31am, the Alarm Phone was directly called by people in distress at sea from a Thuraya satellite phone. It was difficult to understand them, but we learned that they had left Libya 2 hours earlier. We asked them repeatedly for the GPS position, but they did not know it. We explained how to find the position on the satellite phone. We asked them if they had already called the Italian coastguard and they said no, this call was the first they had made. At 9.38am, the travellers called us again and provided us with a GPS position. However, this position seemed to be wrong, thus we asked them to call the Italian coastguard directly. At 9.45am, we called the Italian Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre (MRCC) in Rome ourselves and they asked us to find out more information on this case. Afterwards, we tried to reach the travellers several times, but without success. At 10am, we recharged their satellite phone’s credit, which had gone done to only 1.69 units. At 10.04am, we were informed by Father Mussie Zerai about a boat in distress with the same Thuraya phone number. He had also not been able to obtain their correct GPS position. Eventually, at 10.19am, we were able to talk to the travellers again. This time, they provided us with their current GPS position, which was about 70 kilometres northeast of Al-Khums, Libya. Beyond that, the travellers told us that there were about 100 people on board of the boat, at least one of them pregnant, and that they were in urgent need of help. Immediately afterwards, at 10.23am, we called the MRCC in Rome and forwarded the new GPS position. At 10.37am, we also sent an email with this information and with the travellers’ Thuraya phone number to the Italian and Maltese coastguard. Beyond that, we also informed the crew of Médecins Sans Frontières’ rescue vessel DIGNITY I, which was the closest vessel of the civilian rescue flotilla. At 11am, the travellers called us again. They seemed to be ok and we asked them to stay calm and that it might take some hours until a rescue vessel would arrive at their position. They told us that they were not able to see any rescue vessel and we promised to call them back in about one hour. At 11.10am, we talked again with the MRCC and learned that they had sent a military vessel, which was estimated to arrive at the travellers’ position in about 1.5 hours. We were told that the MRCC had also tried to call the travellers, but without success. We promised to try to forward the given information to the travellers ourselves. We reached them again at 11.20am and told them that a military vessel was on its way to rescue them and should arrive in about 90 minutes. The traveller we talked to told us that their boat’s engine had stopped working and that there were sick people on board. We asked them to stay calm, empty the boat of entering water and promised to call them back in 30 minutes. At 11.30am, we checked their satellite phone’s credit. It was at 25 units. At 11.50am, on marinetraffic.com, we observed a white and quite small Italian vessel with the name ORIZZONTE cruising along the Libyan coast. At 11.59am, we called the travellers again. They told us that they were able to see a white vessel, but that it was quite far away. We told them that it would be a grey military vessel, that should come to rescue them. Furthermore, we realized in the talk that the situation on board of the boat seemed to be calm. The travellers told us that they were managing the situation of distress. Five minutes later, we talked to the MRCC Rome again and informed them about the white vessel. They told us that this was probably a fishing vessel and confirmed to us that the travellers were deemed to be rescued by a grey military vessel. At 12.45am and again at 12.55am, we tried to call the travellers again, but did not reach them. In another call with the MRCC in Rome at 1pm, we were told that all travellers of the boat were rescued and would be brought to Italy. Afterwards, we informed Father Mussie Zerai about the successful rescue operation.