Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 7th of November 2017

Case name: 2017_11_07-WM176
Situation: Five travellers rescued by the Moroccan Navy, whilst one traveller on a second boat died
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary of the Cases: On Wednesday the 7th of November at 11.33am the Alarm Phone received a direct call from a group of five travellers, amongst them one pregnant woman, in distress on their way from Tangier towards Tarifa. The travellers were forced to row, as their boat did not have a motor, and were therefore very tired. On the phone they informed us that they could see an orange vessel, which they assumed was a Spanish rescue vessel. On vesselfinder we could see, that one of the search and rescue vessels of the Spanish rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM), was in the area half way between Tangier and Tarifa. At 12.03 we spoke to the travellers again. This time they were panicking, and stressed the urgency of their situation. Therefore, at 12.06 we called SM and passed on the information we had about the boat. After taking the information, they told us that a Moroccan rescue vessel was approaching the travellers. After calling SM we called the travellers again to try to calm them down, and assure them that rescue was on its way. They told us, that the pregnant woman was in a bad condition, and needed medical treatment. At 12.10 we talked to SM again, and they informed us that they had localised the boat along with another boat with 11 travellers onboard, but as both were very close to the Moroccan coast, the search and rescue operation would be carried out by the Moroccan authorities. At 12.15 we called the Moroccan Maritime Rescue Centre, who took our information, and confirmed that one of their vessels was approaching the travellers.
Half an hour after this confirmation we called the travellers again. In this call they sounded very calm, which made us think that they might already have been rescued, but we didn’t manage to get this confirmed. After this call, it was no longer possible to reach the travellers. SM also could not give us a certain confirmation that the rescue operation had been carried out. Only in the night did we receive a message confirming that both boats which SM had localised had been brought to Morocco. We learned about the tragic death of one person on the boat with 11 travellers. However, the rest of the people, including the pregnant woman, were alright and had been brought to the police station.