“Every day, we are involved” to save migrants, said Thursday, November 25, on franceinfo, Bernard Barron, president of the National Society for Rescue at Sea (SNSM) after the sinking of a boat off Calais (Pas-de-Calais) and the death of 27 migrants. “The smugglers encourage their destitute customers to cross by telling them that it is a lake”, he denounced. According to Bernard Barron, the Channel “is a highway where daily, in each direction, 300 giant boats pass”.
franceinfo: How were you alerted?
Bernard Barron: The alert was triggered by the Cross Gris-Nez around 2:50 p.m. yesterday [mercredi 24 novembre], and the Calais rescue boat set off within a quarter of an hour, as the procedure provides, to reach a point where a fisherman had found the floating bodies at sea. All the rescuers at sea on the Hauts-de- France, de Berck, Boulogne, Calais, Gravelines and Dunkirk were mobilized yesterday to recover or to locate attempts to cross. All the rescuers of Littoral Hauts-de-France were involved. Unfortunately for our crew, it was we who picked up the first corpses, the first bodies at sea.
Which scenario do you favor?
Yesterday at 9 p.m., when the bodies were brought back to Calais, several hypotheses were being considered. La Manche is a motorway where 300 boats pass daily in each direction. And among these ships, there are giant ships, there are giant container ships, there are supertankers.
The boats used by the migrants which are made available by the smugglers are “long-boats”, inflatable boats which are not at all adapted, which are overloaded.
Bernard Barron, president of the Calais SNSMto franceinfo
And when these boats cross the wake of a container ship causing waves of two meters high, you can imagine that these poor guys who are at the water’s edge are victims of a tsunami. This hypothesis is possible. Collision is possible. The manufacturing defect of this boat is possible because they are very light boats which are specially designed by the smugglers for their customers.
Have these relief operations become daily?
Absolutely. Every day, we are involved. Yesterday, for example, our colleagues from Berck-sur-Mer, in the morning, left to locate two boats of the same type which were off Touquet and Berck. Dunkirk did the same, Boulogne did the same. And us, it’s practically every day. This morning, we are ready to leave to look for migrants since the sea is incredibly calm at the moment for the month of November. And the smugglers encourage their destitute customers to cross by telling them it’s a lake. In the end, it’s not a lake, it’s a sea with currents, with boats and storms, with fog, etc.