- That fear, that's been built up,
that you have been keeping inside of you,
that moment it just suddenly comes out.
- I think that's the strongest thing, I take away with
is that you're so close to what's coming for all of us,
is to stay alive, and to be alive, and to be safe.
It's an emotion we can all understand.
- [Woman in boat] Do you know what language they speak?
- For every rescue, the first thing we do,
and I think it's a crucial point,
is to go into the rib, and to get as close as possible
to the boat, and to get connected with the people,
and to get their confidence, to get their trust.
Please stay calm, it's very important to stay calm.
We will rescue all of you.
So we say, "Stay calm.
We're taking you to Italy.
You're all going to be fine."
It's the single-most important thing,
because if people are calm, everything is done
in a much safer way.
- We could have used the small rescue boat we had,
but it can only fit three more people in addition
to the crew that's already on it.
So it would take forever, basically,
if we didn't take it along side.
- I stayed on the sea side, staying on the RIB to continue
that conversation, to keep people calm.
And at that moment when you have that connection,
I would feel calmer and think, "okay, it will be fine."
Then it turned out that everything was not so fine.
- In the beginning things seemed to be working fairly well.
People are coming one by one more or less, steadily,
but there was some fighting, but people were still coming
off the boat.
- In like a split second, it goes from being calm,
and you think you have a connection with people,
then you can just see them going into survival mode,
and they just go for it.
- The situation got completely out of control,
and people just started jumping off, all along the
fishing boat.
They just started jumping onto our boat.
- If someone panics, it takes seconds before
a lot of people panic.
And then, you get into survival mode.
I've never been so close to people who are
going for their life, like "I need to get out."
"I need to survive."
- So at this moment I realize we cannot stop this
from happening.
People are just, literally speaking, piling up on the side
of the ship.
- It's a mix of desperation and determination,
and you see you cannot reach it, it's instinct.
I think it's pure instinct.
- And it was so desperate, because you had families,
where one member of the family, father, mother
comes on to our ship and then look back and
reaches out to help their own family member.
And then we had to just push people down and say,
"Go, go, go!"
And then we would take care of the family member.
It was just chaos.
- And then also one guy fell into the sea, a big guy.
- [Lindis Hurum] Man overboard!
- ...without a life vest, so we focused on getting him out.
But he didn't panic too much, so it was quite easy
to get him out.
- It was so close that people either were crushed to death
or fell into the water, but everyone survived,
everyone was safe.
But I was a bit shocked actually about what had happened,
and how close it was.
- It's an extraordinary experience.
It's very intense to be that close to hundreds of people
who are desperate to get out of that boat,
and knowing that it's my responsibility that this goes okay.
Subtitles by the Amara.org community