It is around 11 p.m and we are getting ready for the night shift, which will start at midnight. Five cases are open. A sixth appears, a bit after midnight. A relative is missing a friend who set out from Algeria to Sardinia by boat. In addition, there is a so-called Evros case, where people have been held for days at the border river between Turkey and Greece. And three boats in Libya, but these are ‘cold cases’ because contact was lost hours ago. The team who was on shift before us suspects two interceptions and one arrival in Lampedusa – which we will be able to confirm during the night.
During the shift handover at 00:03, the Alarm Phone rings. The only case with direct contact to the people on the boat that night. The number of the case is AP0900. This is the 900th emergency in which the Alarm Phone is involved in 2024. 21 people on a fiberglass boat, who were already reported to Alarm Phone during the day by a relative. The relative gave us the number of the satellite phone on board.
At around 8 p.m., the previous shift was able to establish a first direct contact and to get a GPS position, which was in the Maltese zone, around 60 nautical miles from Lampedusa.
At 8:34 p.m., the shift sent a first SOS email to the coast guards in Italy and Malta. “The people on the boat urgently ask for help” reads the email. A rescue vessel from Lampedusa could be on the scene in three hours.
But for many years, the practice has been different: there is most of the time no response to SOS emails, no information shared during the phone calls with Rome and Valletta, and it is foreseeable that no coast guard will react. The failure to provide assistance has become a political normality, which permanently and consciously allows people to die. Will this be the case again tonight?
The surveillance planes of Sea Watch and Pilotes Volontaires were in the copy of the SOS email. Seabird reports that they spotted a boat in the vicinity of the indicated position at 21:00. However, the small aircrafts are not equipped for night flights and therefore could not observe anything further.
With the email, two civilian rescue ships that were operational at the time were also informed: Sea Eye and Nadir. Sea Eye was too far away from the given GPS position, but Nadir was only a few hours away.
The sailing boat replied that it was heading to the case and could be on scene four hours later. Over the next few hours, the evening shift received four more GPS positions and sent new SOS emails to the coast guards and the civilian rescue ships. Again, there was no response from the official authorities in Rome and Malta.
Between 00:03 and 01:24, we had multiple contacts with the relative on land and directly with the boat. The people on the phone sounded desperate. They said that water was entering the boat, that the engine was no longer working and that they were afraid their boat would sink. They repeatedly asked for help.
At 00:37, it seemed to us that there was no longer any engine noise, but also that the water sounded very close. People on the boat said “We are into [sic] the sea” for the first time. Nevertheless, they remained focused, and we explained to them that a rescue boat is on its way, but will take another 1-2 hours to arrive, and that we would need their exact position every 30 minutes, otherwise, no one will be able to find them in the middle of the night.
They understood but were concerned that their satellite phone credit would run out. We reassured them and explained that we could keep an eye on the credit and top it up. Keeping in touch was crucial in the following hours. After a few technical explanations, they then managed to send us a new position by SMS at 1:24 a.m. An SMS position is usually reliable and accurate. At 1:26 a.m., we immediately sent another SOS email with the updated location, which allowed Nadir to adjust their course.
However, 30 minutes later, we were unable to reach the boat as agreed. We were worried because the people on the boat clearly understood how important contact would be in this phase. We wondered, “Why can’t we reach them?” Nadir reported at around 2:00 a.m. that they would still need about 25 minutes to reach the last given position. We tried to reach the boat every five minutes, without success.
At 2:46 a.m., we receive the terrible message from Nadir in the form of a mayday relay: ‘BOAT SUNK. ALL PEOPLE IN THE WATER.’
We had feared it. The weather was not particularly bad, but the boat had been drifting for several hours, which affected stability. In the background of the phone calls, with a voice that was surprisingly calm, we had repeatedly heard noises of water and sometimes frantic to panicked cries for help. Now the boat had really sunk. And that was certainly the reason why we could no longer reach the boat.
We waited anxiously for new messages from Nadir. How many people would they be able to find and save in the middle of the night? How many of the 21 passengers had already drowned or drifted away? The worst case had occurred.
One hour later, which seemed like an eternity, we received this incredible message from Nadir: “21 on Nadir. They confirmed they were 21. All were in the water. There was no boat when we arrived.”
We could hardly believe it and had tears in our eyes. We thanked the Nadir crew for their great commitment and immediately informed the relative, who had been very worried in the meantime and who could hardly believe it either. All 21 people were rescued in the middle of the night, after the people had already spent up to an hour in the water. We later learned that some of those rescued suffered from burns from the petrol-saltwater mixture and some from burns from jellyfish stings. But no one was critically injured. Everyone had survived.
The people had no lifejackets, but they had some tubes and empty cans, around which they bravely held together in three groups in the water. One person had managed to protect his mobile phone in plastic from the water and used it to give light signals when the Nadir appeared in their vicinity.
No long search was necessary, the Civilfleet rescue came literally at the last minute!
Picture: RESQSHIP, rescue by Nadir
Alarm Phone Team from Hanau
On shift during the night from 16 to 17 July 2024
