Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 26th of August 2018
Case name: 2018_08_26-WM319
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to a boat in distress carrying 14 people
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Western Mediterranean

Summary of the Case: On Sunday the 26th of August 2018 the Alarm Phone was alerted to a boat carrying 15 people, including 2 women, which had set off from Tangier.
At 2:12pm CEST we received a call from a relative about a boat which his brother was on. He gave us the position of the boat and told us that although the boat had set off from Tangier at 1am local time, he had not had contact with his brother since 8:47am. At 2:45pm we contacted the Spanish search and rescue organisation Salvamento Maritimo (SM) and gave them the information about the case. At 2:59pm we received an email from SM stating that they had rescued a boat with the same number of people as our case. They provided us with the position of the rescue, which was very close to the position we had for our case. At 3:47pm we called SM and heard that they had rescued two boats that day, one of which had 14 people including two women on board. We gave the name of one traveller and asked for confirmation as to whether this person had been on board the recused boat. At 4:01 SM called back and confirmed that the name of the person we had given had been on the rescued boat.