Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 11th of January 2016

Case name: 2016_01_11-AEG180
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 2 emergency situations in the Aegean Sea, near Samos and Farmakonisi
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday the 11th of January 2016, our Alarm Phone shift team was alerted to 2 emergency situations in the Aegean region.

At 9.17pm, our shift team received a distress message via Facebook, alerting us to a group of people who had stranded on the Greek island of Samos (case 1). Shortly afterwards we were able to speak to the group directly. They said they were 8 people, including two babies and two elderly persons. They had tried to reach help via the international emergency number 112, but nobody had picked up. We called the Port Authority on Samos but were not able to communicate with them. At 10.20pm one of our Greek-speaking members talked to them again and they said that they knew about the case and had transferred it to the responsible authorities, the police. We then also spoke to the Greek coastguards in Piraeus who confirmed that they knew about the group but could not say when they would be able to rescue the people. A few hours later, at about 1.09am, the group confirmed that they had spotted the Greek coastguards who were trying to rescue them but had difficulties reaching their location. At 3.56am they confirmed that they had been rescued.

At 10.55pm one of our Syrian contact persons alerted us to a group stranded on Farmakonisi island (case 2). There were 40 people who had arrived about 4 hours earlier. We were not able to reach them through the obtained phone numbers. After midnight we established contact to the group via WhatsApp. They said that they were 30 people in total who had arrived on the island at 10pm. They sent updated GPS coordinates which we passed on to the Leros Port Authority at 1.15am. The authorities confirmed that they would send a boat to rescue them, presumably in the morning. We informed the group that they would be rescued but that it might take a long while. So we advised them to stay together. In the morning we were unable to reach them but spoke to the Leros Port Authority. They confirmed that they had sent out a boat but were not certain what time they would reach them. At 10.10am we received the confirmation from the people that they were being rescued.