<b>Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 01st November 2020</b> <i>Case name</i>: 2020_11_01-CM312 <i>Situation</I>: A boat carrying 87 people was finally rescued to Lampedusa by the Italian coastguard.  <i>Status of WTM Investigation</i>: Concluded <i>Place of Incident</i>: Central Mediterranean Sea <i>Summary of the Case:</i> Around 13h30 CET of Monday the 26th of October the Alarm Phone was called by a boat in distress carrying around 100 travellers, including 5 women and 7 children. The boat had departed from Zuwara early in the morning of the previous day. At 14h22 our shift team informed Italian and Maltese coastguard via email and passed on all the information we had, including GPS position (in Maltese Search and Rescue area) and satellite phone number. Soon after we called both Italian and Maltese coastguards, the Italian coastguard did not give us any further information but confirmed reception of our email, the Maltese told us that they had engaged in rescue operations that day but could not give us further information at the moment. At 15h10 we published a tweet informing about the situation. At 15h40 we managed to speak to the travellers again who gave us new GPS coordinates which we passed on to authorities. At 16h00 the Maltese coastguard told us by phone that they were working on this case. At 17h20 again we spoke to the travellers who told us that they had two engines, but one was not working and they were running our of fuel. They also gave us a new GPS position and to their request we passed on the phone number of the Maltese coastguard. At 17h31 we sent an email to authorities with this additional information. After receiving another updated GPS position we again passed it on to authorities. At this point the Maltese coastguard was no longer picking up the phone. At 18h55 we received an email from the NGO aircraft Moonbird that they had spotted a boat that seemed to correspond to our case, the boat was 46 nautical miles from Lampedusa. Our shift team continuously tried to re-establish contact with the travellers but never managed to. During the evening we also tried to contact the Maltese coastguard several times in order to get information on a possible rescue operation, however, nobody answered our calls. In the meantime several worried relatives of travellers contacted us asking if we had news on their dear ones. During the night we received confirmation from an Italian NGO That the boat had been rescued to Lampedusa ! Finally, it was confirmed that the people on board were 87.  <i>Twitter Chronology:</i>  26/10 15:10 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1320729461613121536 18:23 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1320778130320203777 22:39 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1320842579932569606  27/10 07:11 https://mobile.twitter.com/alarm_phone/status/1320971289977409536

This post was originally published on Watch the Med.