Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigation – 16th of June 2015

Case name: 2015_06_16-AEG15
Situation: Vessel in distress carrying approximately 40 people rescued in the Aegean Sea by Turkish coastguard
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded (update received on the 23rd of June)
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea, Greece

Summary of the Case: In the night to Tuesday the 16th of June 2015, the Alarm Phone shift team received a call from someone in distress in the Aegean Sea. Due to an unstable phone line, communication was difficult and it could only be understood that there was a group of approximately 40 people in the Aegean Sea who had left from Ayvalik, Turkey and were in urgent need of rescue. After the initial emergency call, contact to the passengers could not be re-established.

The shift team informed the Greek coastguards in Piraeus who said that without further details and a position, they could not do much in this situation. At 2am, the Greek coastguards confirmed that they were searching for the vessel and had also alerted the Turkish coastguards. At 4am, the Greek coastguards confirmed the rescue of the vessel in question without, however, providing any further details. We were suspicious of this confirmation, also due to the fact that there were several vessels in distress in the region so that another vessel could have easily been mistakenly identified as the vessel in question. We sought to verify the rescue operation with one of the passengers. However, his phone could not be reached for several days.

On 23rd of June we were able to establish contact to the person who had contacted us from the vessel. He explained that their engine had broken down “because of water leaking inside the ship and because of the mixing of water and gasoline” as he stated. After that “the fuel leak damaged the ship and cause me burns”. He passed on a GPS position indicating the location in the Aegean Sea where they got stuck. They were still in the Turkish SAR zone and eventually the Turkish coastguard rescued them (see source 1).