UK and French coastguards ‘passed buck’ as 27 people drowned in Channel

BY|theguardian

Crucial hours wasted debating who should rescue dinghy carrying 34 passengers, ITV documentary reveals

UK and French emergency coastguard services spent crucial hours passing the buck about which of them should rescue a stricken small boat trying to cross the Channel last November, instead of dispatching a crew to save the 34 people onboard, a documentary reveals.

Most of the migrants subsequently drowned in the worst maritime disaster in the Channel for 30 years.

The revelations come at a time when Channel crossings in small boats have reached record levels, with about 40,000 people having crossed so far this year.

The documentary, The Crossing, part of ITV’s award-winning Exposure series, has gained access to documents that provide new evidence about the fatal journey of the 34 passengers onboard the overcrowded dinghy. At least 27 people died, with five still missing and two survivors.

Issa Mohammed, a Somali asylum seeker and one of the two survivors, provides a detailed testimony in the documentary. He said: “Children were screaming. All I could hear were the screams of children drowning. I saw dead bodies floating by my side. That’s when the horror kicked in.”

Internal legal documents obtained by the documentary team set out in minute-by-minute detail the events of that night, based on the French coastguard’s emergency log of the incident.

While the French coastguard has disclosed its record of emergency calls to lawyers in the case as part of the French investigation into the tragedy, so far its UK counterpart has not. In the UK, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch is conducting an investigation.

At 4.34am on 24 November the French coastguard closed its incident log assuming it had been dealt with by British rescue services. This was not the case.

While UK logs of the mass drowning have not been disclosed, internal UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency documents have raised questions about how SOS calls from small boats are handled. One document reveals a flowchart for search and rescue termination of a migrant incident. It states: “UK Border Force determine if vessel will meet UKBF criteria to deploy tactics.”

Another internal document, titled Broadcast Action for Migrant Incidents, states there has been confusion about when a mayday distress call can be broadcast in relation to migrant boats in distress.

The document says: “The actions taken in the distress phase can be different for small boat migrant incidents to other more conventional distress incidents and if the SMC [senior mission commander] considers that distress broadcast is not appropriate for small boat migrant incidents then that is acceptable.”

According to the internal French legal documents, the first call for help from passengers on the dinghy to the French coastguard at the Cross Gris-Nez regional office came at 1.48am on 24 November when the boat started taking in water and began to deflate. The engine stopped and efforts by the passengers to bale out the water from the dinghy also failed.

The passengers were informed wrongly by the emergency services that help was on its way. Passengers sent the GPS location of the boat to the emergency services repeatedly but as the hours went by they lost hope and drowned one by one.

Emergency services could hear the screams of people drowning. Passengers begged them to come, saying: “We are dying come and get us.”

At 2.28am, the French coastguard called its English equivalent, gave the position of the boat and said that now it was in English waters it was no longer its responsibility, according to the internal legal documents.

At 2.44am, the English coastguard emailed Cross Gris-Nez to say it considered the boat was in French territorial waters as it could hear a continental ringtone on a passenger’s phone.

At 4.16am, a last call was made to the French coastguard, saying: “People are in the water, it’s over.”

At the same time, a vessel called Concerto reported seeing a small boat in distress and asked the emergency services if it should rescue it. Cross Gris-Nez said another rescue boat was on its way but no rescue took place.

Matthew Schanck, a maritime expert instructed by lawyers for some of the victims’ families, said: “The fact of the matter is that over 30 people were left in the middle of one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world slowly perishing one by one and almost nothing happened.”

A government spokesperson said: “Our thoughts are with the families of all of those who lost their lives in the tragic incident last November. As is standard practice in such circumstances, the Marine Accident Investigation Branch is conducting a safety investigation focusing on the emergency response to the incident, which HM Coastguard and the Home Office are fully cooperating with.

“It would be inappropriate to comment further while the investigation is ongoing.”