Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 17th of December 2017Case name: 2017_12_17-WM201
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to emergency situation in the Western Med
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea
Summary of the Case: On Sunday the 17th of December 2017, our Alarm Phone shift team was informed at 8.15am by a contact person in Morocco to a boat in distress, carrying four people. It had left at 3am and we were forwarded a phone number. After several attempts we were able to establish contact with the boat at 8.27am. They confirmed that they had left from Tangier Med and were on a rubber dinghy, trying to reach Tarifa. They had an engine but were all very exhausted and in difficult weather conditions. They asked us to inform the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM) and we requested their exact GPS position which they could at first not forward.
We spoke to SM at 8.34am and they had already learned about this case and were searching for them. At 8.42am, the boat-people stated that they could see two container vessels in the vicinity. We tried to locate these two vessels on online tracking websites to estimate their position. At 9.09am, we learned that the people on the boat were paddling, possibly their engine had broken down. At 9.13am they stated that they could see a helicopter but were not sure whether the helicopter had detected them. We saw that a Spanish search and rescue vessel was approaching their location and we informed the boat-people about these developments, which reassured them. At 9.54am, they were able to pass on their current GPS position via WhatsApp to us, which we passed on to SM. SM confirmed that they were heading into this direction. At 10.41am, the boat people confirmed to us that they had been rescued.
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