Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25nd of October 2020
Case name: 20201025-WM512
Situation: 52 travellers at sea for days, capsizing close to the Spanish coast and finally rescued just in time and brought to Motril
Place of incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary of the case:
In the night of Sunday the 25th of October, we received a call from a relative who informed us about a boat with 52 travellers which had left from west of Al Hoceima the previous day at around 14.00, heading towards Malaga. The relative had last been in contact with the travellers at 17.00 the previous day. We were not able to reach the travellers during the night, despite constantly trying. The next morning at 08.39 we called the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM) and gave them the information we had. However, SM insisted that they could not initiate a search and rescue operation without more information. We were in contact with SM several times during the morning, and passed on all information we were able to obtain thorugh the relative. We were increasingly worried about the travellers, as the weather was getting worse and they had already been at sea for a long time. At 13.50 the relative informed us that they had just been in contact with the travellers who were close to the beach of Malaga. The relative further told us that they were in distress as there were high waves. We were not able to reach the travellers ourselves, but at 14.04 we called SM again and passed on this information. They confirmed to us on the phone that they were searching for the travellers close to Malaga. We were able to follow the trajectory of the search and rescue asset of SM on vesselfinder. In the meantime, the relative managed to stay in contact with the travelles, and informed us about their continuous distress. At 16.19 we spotted a helicopter operating in the area as well as the search and rescue vessel. At 16.45 we managed to reach the travellers directly, but due to bad connection the only information we could gather was that they were still at sea but could see the coast. From the relative we learned that the travellers had had direct contact to SM as well, but that SM was having problems localising them. This was confirmed to us by SM. At 18.25 we reached the travellers again. They told us that they were out of fuel and therefore left adrift, and that the waves were high and the wind strong. They estimated that they were 4km from the coast. We passed on this information to SM immediately. At 21.15 we could see on vesselfinder that another search and rescue vessel as well as a helicopter of SM were searching the area. We called SM again at 21.20, and they confirmed that they had spotted a boat matching our description. They expected to arrived with their rescue vessel within 20 minutes. We learned that the boat had capsized shortly before rescue arrived, and that some of the travellers had to be transported to the hospital immediately after being rescued. However, all 52 travellers arrived to Motril and survived the disaster.