Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 22nd of September 2015

Case name: 2015_09_22-AEG78
Situation: 3 distress cases in the Aegean Sea, close to Nera/Agathonisi and Lesvos, Greece
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Tuesday the 22nd of September 2015, the Alarm Phone was alerted to three cases in the Aegean Sea,

At 1.50am, we received a 1st call from a contact person from the UK, who informed us that a group of 30 persons had stranded on the Northern tip of the island of Nera, Agathonisi, Greece. Apparently some of the stranded travellers were injured due to a hard landing. The Greek coastguard was already informed, so we only sent an e-mail. We also tried to contact the group directly but could not reach them. We received another two calls about the case, from different Facebook-groups, the second one at 4.37am with an updated position, which we forwarded to the Greek coastguard. The coastguard explained that due to bad weather it was too difficult to reach the island by boat, but they had informed the local port authorities who would start the rescue with the first daylight. At 7.17am, we contacted the police in Agathonisi, who informed us that the rescue of the travellers was ongoing. At 10.37 one of the contact persons, who was in direct contact with the travellers confirmed their rescue.

At 4am the Alarm Phone was alerted to a 2nd distress case of 35 travellers going into the direction of Lesvos, but still located near Dikili, Turkey, when they sent an SOS. Since we could not reach the travellers directly, we followed the request of the contact person and called the Turkish coastguard. They already had a case in the same area and said that they had sent a boat to rescue. At 8:45am we received a WhatsApp from our contact person saying that all travellers had been rescued by the Turkish coastguard.
The 3rd alert of the day reached us at 9.23am and concerned a vessel carrying 41 persons near Lesvos. We reached the travellers, but communication was difficult. The Greek coastguards told us that they were working on 12 cases in the North of Lesvos and had sent many rescue boats. A few minutes later the contact person confirmed the rescue of the boat we had been informed about.