Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 28th of December 2015

Case name: 2015_12_28-AEG170
Situation: 300 travellers stranded on Farmakonisi and Pasas, 1 boat in distress near Lesvos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday the 28th of December 2015 the Alarm Phone was alerted to 3 groups of at least 230 travellers stuck on the Greek island of Farmakonisi and to another group of about 70 travellers who had stranded on the Greek island of Pasas. While the travellers on Pasas were picked up and brought to Chios by the Chios Refugee Support Group in due time, the groups on Farmakonisi were forced to wait up to 24 hours until they were transferred to Leros. Furthermore, we were alerted to a boat in distress on its way to the Greek island of Lesvos. After informing the Turkish coastguard we lost contact to this boat, but learned that the travellers had refused to be rescued by the Turkish coastguard and had continued their passage to Greece. Only more than 12 hours after their initial distress call we received a confirmation that they had safely arrived on Lesvos independently.

At 0.30am a contact person alerted us via WhatsApp to a group of 100 travellers, including 30 women and 40 children, who had stranded on the Greek military island of Farmakonisi (case 1). The contact person forwarded their GPS position and phone number and we were able to talk directly to one of the travellers at 0.40am. We were told that the group had arrived on Farmakonisi at around midnight and that particularly the children were freezing in their wet clothes. At 0.50am we called the responsible port authorities on the Greek island of Leros and urged them to quickly pick up the travellers. At 1.05am the group called the international emergency hotline 112 themselves, but only reached an automatic answering machine. In another call with the authorities on Leros at 1.15am we were told that they would send a rescue vessel on the next morning. Furthermore, at 1.30am, we informed the UNHCR both in Greece and in Turkey about the stranded travellers via e-mail. On the next morning, at 6.40am, we called the group again. They told us that they were fine, but that they were worrying about the freezing children and some pregnant women. In another call at 8am they informed us that their situation was getting worse and that no vessel had arrived so far. We called the port authorities on Leros again and were told that a rescue vessel had left Leros in the direction of Farmakonisi and was supposed to arrive there at about 10am. We forwarded this information to the travellers and asked them to keep us updated. Already some minutes later they informed us that the rescue vessel ILIAS T had arrived on Farmakonisi and had picked up some travellers. However, because the vessel was too small to take all of them, 75 people were still stuck on the island. We followed the trajectory of the rescue vessel on vesselfinder.com and observed it going to Leros and departing again in the direction of Farmakonisi at about 10.30am. At 11.15am we learned from the travellers that the rescue vessel had again picked up some of them, while many still had to wait. At 12.45am we observed the ILIAS T departing from Leros another time and at 2.20pm it had again arrived on Farmakonisi. At 3pm we were informed that another group had arrived on the island, adding up another 100 travellers to the 75 people still waiting to be picked up. At 3.15pm our contact person on Farmakonisi told us that the rescue vessel had left Farmakonisi for the last time on this day and that the remaining travellers would only be transferred to Leros on the next day. In the evening, at 8.30pm, the travellers called us again and informed us that a third group had arrived on the island. At that time 200 travellers, including 70 women and 50 children, were stuck on Farmakonisi and were forced to spend the night outdoors, without any food and water. At 9pm we sent an e-mail to the Greek authorities and to the UNHCR Greece and updated them about the newly arrived people. On the next day, one of our contact persons informed us that the remaining travellers had been picked up in the course of the morning.

On Monday the 28th of December 2015 at 0.50am several contact persons alerted us to a group of 60 to 70 travellers, including 25 women and more than 30 children, who had stranded on the uninhabited island of Pasas, east of the Greek island of Chios (case 2). The contact persons provided us with the group’s GPS coordinates and phone number and at 1am we were able to reach the travellers. They had arrived some minutes earlier and were fine, however, they were in need to be picked up from the island. At 1.10am they provided us with an updated GPS position and at 1.20am we alerted the port authorities on Chios via phone and e-mail. We were told that the travellers would certainly be picked up and transferred to Chios, but that they probably have to wait until the next morning. Later on we also called the Chios Refugee Support Group but did not reach them. At 4.30am one activist of this group called us back and told us that the support group had arrived on Pasas about one hour earlier. During this call a second rescue vessel arrived, thus being able to transfer all travellers to Chios.

At 5.45am the Alarm Phone received a WhatsApp message, alerting us to a boat in distress in Turkish territorial waters east of the Greek island of Lesvos, with 50 people on board (case 3). We were provided with the phone number of the travellers and communicated with them via WhatsApp immediately afterwards. We informed them that they were still in Turkish waters, but they explicitly asked us to alert the Turkish coastguard, because they were in distress. We called the Turkish coastguard at 5.55am and forwarded the GPS position of the boat in distress. One hour later we talked again to the Turkish coastguard and were told that they had sent a rescue vessel to the position in question. However, the travellers had refused to be rescued and had continued their passage in the direction of Lesvos, obviously their engine had started working again. The Turkish rescue vessel had monitored the situation, but had not stopped the boat on its way to Greece. Afterwards, both the person who had initially alerted us to this boat in distress and we were not able to establish contact to the travellers again. In the course of the day we sent several WhatsApp messages asking for updates, but did not receive an answer. However, at 6.50pm, our contact person informed us that the travellers had arrived on Lesvos on their own. At 7pm we saw that they had eventually read our WhatsApp messages, which also indicated that they had arrived safely.