AFM moves waterlogged Operations centre to new facility at Lyster Barracks

In a statement, the AFM said that water ingress from the storm risked causing damage to the electrical supply, and the decision was taken to move operations to the reserve site at 1st Regiment’s Control Room, in Lyster Barracks, Hal Far.

Rain flooded the Operations Centre, leaving outpost sentinels stationed around the Maltese islands without any radio contact with their base in Luqa, who were ordered to use landline or mobile phones to report any irregular costal sightings to Hal Far Lyster Barracks where a temporary operations centre was set up.

The new facility, which is equipped as a physically-separate alternate command and control element, was operational by 6pm, on 25 October.

“The reserve site functioned flawlessly during the period when the necessary repairs were being undertaken to the AFM Operations Centre at Luqa, and demonstrated the capability to monitor and communicate with all AFM assets on land, at sea and in the air,” AFM spokesperson Ivan Consiglio said.

The facility also coordinate a number of search and events, all of which proved to be either false activations or related to vessels no longer flying the Maltese flag.

Assistance was also provided to the sailing yacht “Buccaneer” on Tuesday 26 October, which was participating in the 2010 Rolex Middle Sea Race and involved in a collision with an unknown vessel in the Malta Channel.

The AFM said claims that “operations coordination in the central Mediterranean region” was blacked out was false and that communications were fully maintained.

The AFM also said there had been no damage to equipment in the facility, and that the premises does not host any form of FRONTEX command element for the central Mediterranean.

“Search and rescue operations within the Malta FIR continued to be managed as normal and coordination was at no time passed to third parties.”