Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 2nd of April 2021

Case name: 2021_04_02-CM401

Situation: 60 people departed from Sabratha in the evening of 31st March and were in severe distress for hours before they reached Lampedusa

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean

Summary of the Case:

At 09:11h CEST on 2nd of April 2021 the Alarm Phone hotline got called by a satelite phone. The 60 travellers, including 10 women and 5 children, stated to be in a distress situation, they had no drinking water left and some people were sea sick. They transferred a GPS position and asked for urgent help. We informed authorities and the NGO Sea-Watch at 09:53h CEST and made the case publish on Twitter. Whenever we received another GPS position we immediately shared the information with authorities in Malta and Italy and with Sea-Watch. At 11:55h CEST the travellers told us to have seen an air plane and later Sea-Watch’s civilian reconnaissance aircraft Moonbird reported to have spotted a grey wooden boat with around 80 passengers. At 13:28h CEST the situation got tense as waves were high and water was entering. Although Moonbird spotted the travellers again on 17:42h CEST and reported to the authorities that the boat is unable to navigate hours later there was still no rescue in sight. The whole evening the Alarm Phone members phoned the authorities to make sure rescue will come, but Italy denied responsibility and Malta wasn’t eager to give information. In the night to 3rd April the travellers called every hour to give GPS positions to us which was relayed to all authorities. At 04:56h we had the last contact to them. Only in the evening of 3rd April we could confirm that the travellers reached Lampedusa.

Twitter chronology

2nd April 2021
10:32h CEST https://twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1377901471946174467