Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 24th of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_24-AEG51
Situation: Vessel in distress near Lesvos, fate unknown
Status of WTM Investigations: Open
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea

Summary of the case: On Monday the 24th of August, shortly after midnight, the Alarm Phone was contacted by a friend who informed us about a vessel in distress in the Aegean Sea. He sent us the GPS position of the vessel and the phone number of one of the travellers. We reached out to the vessel that was located near Lesvos/Greece but we could not get through to the group. When we reached out to the Greek coastguards they said that they had already been informed about this particular case.

At 3.20am the coastguards stated that they could not find them in the provided position. They had been able to contact them and had heard a running engine – so they assumed that the vessel might have already arrived on Lesvos. At 9.19am, the coastguards reported that they had had various distress cases in the previous night and could not identify the group in question.

The Lesvos Port Authority said that they would look into the case and asked us to reach out to them again at a later point. At 3.55pm, they told us that they had just rescued 8 people and recovered two dead bodies but they could not tell us whether the vessel in question had been rescued or not. Later on it emerged that more, at least 5 people had drowned (see sources 1 and 2). Also hours later, no further information on the fate of the people could be obtained.