Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 11th of June 2018

Case name: 2018_06_11-WM259
Situation: 11 travellers rescued by Salvamento Maritimo and brought to Tarifa
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case:
On Monday the 11th of June, at 2.51am CET, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a contact person to a group of 11 travellers, forwarding us their phone number. The travellers had left a few hours earlier from a beach close to Tangier on a small rubber boat without any motor. At 3.05am we spoke to the travellers. Communication was difficult, and in the end the call was interrupted. We tried getting the position of the travellers, but only at 3.42am we got this information via the contact person. We stayed in contact with the people and received their updated positions regularly. In the early hours of the morning, we saw on vesselfinder that one of the Spanish search and rescue vessels, Arcturus, was very close to the position of the travellers. At 7.30am we called the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM) who were already alerted to the case. During the rescue operation we called them back with an updated
position. On vesselfinder we could see that Arcturus stopped very close to the latest position we
had received. At 8.13am we got the information from the contact person that the travellers had
been rescued by SM.