'I want to be back where I'm needed': Aid worker slams Italy
As a volunteer on board the Aquarius, Max speaks of the horror and chaos he encountered with the 629 migrants on the vessel.
Friday 15 June 2018 22:37, UK
Max is a deputy search and rescue co-ordinator on board the migrant rescue ship Aquarius for SOS Mediterranee.
He tells Sky News of his experience on board the vessel which Italian authorities refused to allow into its docks and is being taken to Spain.
In the dark, the rubber boat collapses, 50 people scream for their lives in the water with no life jackets.
More than 70 people are in danger - waves coming from all angles.
The rescue ship is about a mile away.
The support rescue boat breaks down, people crush each other in the wreck.
People are floating and running out of life jackets.
I spot a drowned guy under the water... my fingers touch his hair, his shirt. Then we have him, medic resuscitation.
More people from the sea...we bury the medic under them, throw life jackets.
Our boat is overrun, we take life jackets off people climbing on us and throw them to the next person as the rubber boat broke.
We pull away slowly though people are clinging to us... get people floating, clear our rescue boat to life rafts, support boat arrives they almost get over run.
Then back to the ship, offload the drowned guy, keep medic; more life jackets and power through the darkness, weave around the ones screaming with life jackets. For five hours...
That was my job five days ago.
When the sun came up, we had 629 people on the ship transfers and rescues. All the transfers were from Italian coast guard vessels, more than half of the people on board.
Then we had to wait for days standing still in the heat.
Food running low, people getting anxious, one swears he will jump.
And now we are being f***ing sent to Spain.
Get this - they split the people we rescued into two other Government ships who cover the same area as us!
Three rescue ships.
As if diverting one rescue ship from the most deadly patch of sea on earth isn't stupid enough right.
But it doesn't stop there. The next day, another Italian coast guard ship landed about 900 people in Italy - the sister ship of the one currently travelling in convoy to Spain with us now.
This whole exercise appears to just be political.
And it gets worse. The stretch of the sea we are travelling through is rough.
We took four metre waves last night, sending spray over the ship.
The nurses, who worked non-stop, held vomit bags for mothers as they breast fed - the same people who just survived a ship wreck.
I wish you could talk to this one guy, who suffered a loss, survived a shipwreck, hauled onto Aquarius, left to drift on our ship for days, and is vomiting as we get hit by a storm.
He asked me for a pen to colour the crocs we gave him. He is so polite and kind to me even, asks me how I am.
And then he asks me why this is happening. I tell him it's because there are horrible people in the world.
This ship is a specialised tool to save lives of vulnerable people who many would rather die.
I want to be back in the place we are needed, not on this farcical ego trip.
Human life is sacred.
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