Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 15th of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_15-AEG43
Situation: Three vessels in Turkish waters, all rescued
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea, Turkey

Summary of the case: On Saturday the 15th of August, the Alarm Phone was alerted to three emergency cases in the Aegean Sea. At about 11am, Nawal Soufi’s activist collective passed on a number and the GPS position of a vessel in distress. They were still in Turkish waters and the Turkish coastguards in Ankara said that they would look into the situation. Already shortly afterwards, at about 11.51am, they confirmed the rescue of the vessel.

At approximately 1.32pm, we were contacted by a German woman who went to Turkey as a tourist. At the beach Yesil Liman she observed that about 2 hours earlier a vessel was rescued by the Turkish coastguards but also that, shortly before the rescue, four travellers had jumped into the water. She said that they were swimming ever since toward the island of Lesvos/Greece. She had already informed the Turkish coastguards but nobody had come. We reached out to the Greek coastguards on Lesvos and they said that they would send a vessel to the location. At 2pm we informed our contact person who said that she could not see the four anymore. We then passed on the phone number of the Greek coastguards to our contact person who, at about 2.55pm called again, saying that she had been informed about strong currents in the area. At 3.30pm the Greek coastguards said that they were informed about the case and that they could see that the four travellers were swimming back toward Turkey. At 4.55 our contact person reported that the Turkish coastguards confirmed the rescue of the travellers. Shortly afterwards, the Turkish authorities confirmed their rescue also to us.

At about 9.07pm, we received a call from someone stating that she knew of a vessel carrying about 40 people, including many children, near Izmir that was on the verge of capsizing. Shortly afterwards we received a phone number as well as GPS coordinates of the vessel. Our contact person said that the Turkish coastguards were not responding to her calls. We were also unable to reach different Turkish authorities until about 9.55pm when the Turkish coastguards confirmed that the vessel had been rescued. We passed this information on to our contact person.