Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 16th of December 2017

Case name: 2017_12_16-WM199
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to several emergency situations in the Western Med
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Saturday the 16th of December 2017, our Alarm Phone shift team was informed at 5.24am by a contact person in Morocco about three small boats that were trying to cross the Western Mediterranean, carrying 11, 6 and 6 people respectively. They had left at midnight (local Moroccan time) from Tangier and our contact person told us that their rubber boats were losing air. They did not have engines but only paddles. The last contact to the boat people was at 5am, and in the exchange the people had spoken about dramatically deteriorating weather conditions.

Our shift team was unable to reach the people directly, and so we contacted the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM) at 5.51am. We were informed that SM was involved in search and rescue activities concerning 5 boats, approximately in the same area. They had rescued a small boat already, carrying 9 people. At 7.40am, SM confirmed that they had rescued two rubber boats, but it was not possible to verify whether these were the boats we had been alerted to.

At 11.24am, our contact person in Morocco stated that the boat with 11 people had returned to Morocco and the travellers were currently in a hospital. We informed SM about this a minute later, and they stated that they were still looking for a boat with 6 people, after just having rescued a boat with 7 people. At 11.41am we learned that on the boat that had returned to Morocco there had been 10 instead of 11 people, but one person went missing after he had gone overboard. Later we found out that the group had stranded at the harbour of Tangiers after they had not succeeded to get far out into the Strait of Gibraltar. Exhausted, they were unable to land their boat and were near a cliff. One person tried to climb it but fell into the water. They were then rescued by a small vessel from the harbour with a single captain, but one person remains missing.

SM later tweeted that they had rescued people from 5 boats. Later on, our contact person confirmed that the two other boats we had been alerted to were rescued to Spain.