Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 16th of December 2015

Case name: 2015_12_16-AEG159
Situation: About 400 travellers stranded on Farmakonisi, 13 other distress cases in the Aegean, ‬near Farmakonisi, Kalolimnos, Ro, Kos, Lesvos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Wednesday the 16th of December 2015 the Alarm Phone was alerted to a total of 13distress cases in the Aegean. We received various calls about and from travellers stuck on Farmakonisi. About 400 people had stranded on the military island and had to wait - some for more than 4 days - to be picked up and transferred to Leros. On Farmakonisi, stranded travellers were again left without food and water, no medical assistance and no or insufficient shelter from the cold. Even though some travellers were picked up, many more were left behind on the island, while others kept arriving. A group of travellers who had stranded on Ro were picked up by the Kastellorizo port Authorities. The other alerts concerned boats in distress, mostly near Lesvos (Mytilene) but also near Kos and Kalolimnos. In one case of distress north of Lesvos, contact to the travellers was lost. In all other cases, the boats and all travellers were rescued - in all but two cases to Greece.

Case 1: Once again many of the alerts we received concerned the situation on Farmakonisi: At 2:02am we received a first distress call from the military island: A group of 30 travellers asked for help, because they were without any food and water. 45 minutes later, we received a WhatsApp message about another group of about 200 travellers who had stranded on Farmakonisi. We reached out to the travellers and they told us that people kept arriving and that on their side of the island they were about 300 persons. Some of them were injured.
We rang the Port Authorities on Leros, but did not reach them, so we asked the Coast Guard, who promised help. We also contacted the UNHCR in Athens, the Red Cross, and the Hellenic Rescue Team in Thessaloniki. The authorities and help organizations were aware of the situation on Farmakonisi, but no immediate action was taken.
At 2:37pm a boat finally arrived in Farmakonisi, but they only took 40 persons on board. At 3pm a second boat picked up 50. We continuously received alerts to and calls from travellers still on Farmakonisi. According to our contact persons there were at least 400 travellers on Farmakonisi - mostly in the South and the East of the island.
In the evening after 5pm, we called the Port Authorities several times to inquire whether more boats would be sent to Farmakonisi, but they told us that probably no boat would cross until the next day. We informed our contact persons about this and told them to be prepared to spend the night on the island. At the same time we continued pressuring the authorities to become active, as people were suffering from the cold, dehydration and the lack of medical assistance. The Coastguard told us on the phone that they never let people on the island for more than 24 hours, but according to our information, several travellers had spent more than 48 hours on Farmakonisi already.
On Thursday morning, at 6:30am we reached out to the stranded travellers on Farmakonisi. They told us that they were still several hundreds of people and that they were waiting near the port. A small fishing boat had arrived earlier in the morning and a military ship had passed around 6am, but they had just picked up a group of soldiers. We were in contact with several people on the island, who all gave the same picture of the situation:
They were without food and water, they had not slept during the night and especially the children were suffering from the cold. At 6:50am we called the Leros Port Authorities and asked when they would send a boat to Farmakonisi. They told us that the weather was too bad. We insisted that a military ship had crossed and they told us that they would send help and to call them back later. When we called them back at 7.37am, the Port Authorities just repeated that the weather was too bad to send a ship, a claim that was not true according to the people on the island and the weather forecast. At 8am we called the UNHCR representative on Leros, who promised us to talk to the Port authorities on Farmakonisi and who asked us to call him back at noon. At 8.15am, we reached one of the travellers on the island, who told us that he had spent already three nights on the island. He said that about 150 people had been picked up in three groups on Wednesday, but that they were again about 400 on the island, as boats kept arriving. There had been fights during different groups about the little water and food and about the places on the ships. A few minutes later, another person called us from Farmakonisi giving a very similar account to the first and stating that he would not survive another night on the island. We sent a high priority email to the UNHCR and the Greek Coastguard. At 10am we discovered on Marinetraffic that the passenger ship Ilias T had left Farmakonisi during the night (probably one of the transfers from Farmakonisi to Leros), and had returned to the island in the early morning. However, they were apparently stationed in the north of the island and did not seem to take on board any of the stranded people. We sent another Email to the UNHCR asking about the ship and the possibilities of the Ilias T. to transfer people to Leros. We also tried to contact the UNHCR delegate on Leros and the Port Authorities again, but without success. At half past noon we finally reached the Port Authorities, who said that there was no ship on Farmakonisi and that we should call them back later. They were obviously giving false information to us. At 12.44pm the Ilia T. moved towards the port of Farmakonisi. We informed the UNHCR delegate on Leros about the movement of the sip, urging him to pressure the Port Authorities that the Ilias T. would take people on board. However, the Ilias T. only spent a couple of minutes in the port before leaving Farmakonisi. They were headed towards Kalimnos and not to Leros. Had they taken anyone from Farmakonisi?
We tried several times to call our contacts on the island, but nobody picked up the phone. Contact persons of ours on Facebook said that they heard from the travellers on the island that a ship had passed and that there had been a fight amongst the people, who were desperate to go on board, and also between soldiers and travellers. Apparently some food was handed out, which had also caused a fight among the people. At 1.30pm we established direct contact to people on Farmakonisi, who could not confirm that the Ilias had taken people on board. One hour later, at 2.30pm, we finally managed to reach the Port Authorities. The person on duty admitted that they "did not have a plan how to manage the situation on Farmakonisi", but that they would try to transfer all the stranded travellers to Leros today. Around 3pm, we had contact with a person on Farmakonisi again, who said that they had been given some water and food and that they had been told that a ship would come to pick them up. In the afternoon, the people made bonfires on the beaches to keep warm. The situation seemed to have calmed down. We kept in touch with different groups on the island and kept calling the Port Authorities throughout the afternoon. However, from 7pm onwards none of our contacts on the island answered our calls anymore.
All throughout Friday morning, we tried reaching out to the travellers still stuck on the island, but without any success. On Marientraffic, we could see that the ship Ilias T. was going back and forth between Farmakonisi and Leros - apparently, that is, we thought: hopefully transferring people! Around 2pm, one of our contact persons, who was not on the island, confirmed to us, that some of the groups he had been in touch with had indeed been transferred to Leros. Around this time (2pm) the Ilias T. stopped going back to Farmakonisi. At midnight, another contact, who had also not been on the island himself, but who had been in direct contact with some of the people on the island confirmed to us that all people had been transferred and had been taken care of on Leros. Some of them had spent 4 strenuous days on Farmakonisi.


Case 2: At 4.40am, we received a distress case of a boat carrying about 20 persons with a broken engine near the island of Kalolimnos. We called the Greek Coastguard, who promised to send help. At 5am our contact person confirmed the rescue.

Case 3: At 4.45am, we were alerted to a group of 50 travellers stranded on the island of Ro. We called the Greek Coastguard, who were already informed about the case. They promised to send someone to rescue. At 10.30am we received an alert via WhatsApp from another contact person also about 50 persons stranded on Ro - so probably the same group that we had been alerted to earlier in the morning. We never reached the travellers and had to try several times before we reached the Port Authorities on Kastellorizo. When we finally talked to them in the afternoon, they told us that they had picked up 53 persons from Ro.

Case 4: Shortly past 11am, we were informed via Facebook about a case of distress near Mytilene. We did not have any detailed information about the situation, but the coordinates and telephone-number of a boat. We could not reach them, but forwarded their position to the Coastguard in Mytilene. At 5.30pm two Facebook contacts wrote us that the boat had been saved and brought to Mytilene.

Case 5: At half past noon, we received a direct call from people in distress on sea, near Mytilene/Lesvos. We immediately informed the Greek coastguard. The person on duty told us that they had just received a distress call from a boat near Mytilene and that they had sent a rescue boat there. At 3:44pm the travellers told us that they had been saved by a big ship.

Case 6: At 3:40pm, we received another alert via Facebook. The boat in distress was in Turkish waters, north of Lesvos. The travellers could not be reached, as their phone was out of coverage. After having tried several times unsuccessfully to join them we called the Turkish Coastguard. The latter knew about the boat already and said they would look for them. At 7pm, when we called the Coastguard again, they told us that they had not encountered a boat in the position. Unfortunately, neither we nor the person, who had alerted us to the case, were able to reach the travellers.

Case 7: A few minutes to 8pm, we received a Whatsapp message about a boat in distress east of Farmakonisi, already in Greek territorial waters. We could not establish direct contact with the boat, but our contact person had spoken to them: The travellers had recounted that they had been blocked by a commando boat for more than an hour and that another boat, which they presumed to be a boat of the Greek Coast Guard, had watched them, but had not interfered. We immediately called the Greek Coast Guard and sent an Email to the UNHCR to inform them about the case. We made very clear to the Greek Coast Guard’s officer on duty that we obtained information about one of their boats’ being involved in this incident and that we will observe their further procedure. At 8.30pm the Coast Guard called us back and told us honestly concerned that they had no rescue vessel in operation east of Farmakonisi but wanted to be updated about this case. However, they had managed to establish contact with the boat, but were not able to communicate with them due to language problems. Thus, they asked us to get in touch with the travellers again, as we were able to communicate with them in Arabic and asked us to forward any new information to them. At 8.45pm our contact person informed us that the travellers in distress had been rescued, but at this point in time it remained unclear to us, which national Coast Guard performed the rescue operation. At 8.47pm we called the officer in Piraeus again and told him that the boat was rescued. He was surprised as he had no information about any ongoing Greek rescue operation in this area. He assumed that the Turkish Coastguard performed the rescue operation. In any case he was very eager to hear what happened to the people and stated honestly that he was relieved that the travellers had been saved. At 10.19pm the travellers sent us a WhatsApp message, stating that it was indeed the Turkish Coast Guard who had saved them.

Besides these 7 cases of distress, in which the Alarm Phone became active, we were also alerted to and could document 6 other cases of distress: two in Turkish waters, near Kos, and four in vicinity of Lesvos, mostly near Mytilene city. In all cases, the rescue of all travellers could be confirmed. In one of the cases close to Lesvos, we were told that Greek volunteers had carried out the rescue operation. In another case close to Lesvos, with about 50 traveller involved, the boat was rescued and taken back to Turkey by the Turkish coastguard.