Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 22nd of January 2016

Case name: 2016_01_22-AEG190
Situation: 34 people drowned off Kalolimnos; 5 boats in distress near Lesvos; 4 boats stranded on Farmakonisi, Samos and Pasas
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Friday the 22nd of January 2016 the Alarm Phone was alerted to a tragic shipwreck northeast of the Greek island of Kalolimnos, in which at least 34 people died while 26 were rescued and many more went missing. At the same day the Alarm Phone was in contact with 5 boats in distress on their way to the Greek island of Lesvos and 4 groups of travellers who had stranded on the islands of Farmakonisi, Samos and Pasas. All of them were rescued by the Greek coastguard, local authorities and independent rescue organizations.

On the early morning of Friday the 22nd of January a contact person informed the Alarm Phone about a shipwreck northeast of the Greek island of Kalolimnos (case 1). At 3.26am he wrote to us that at least 5 people have drowned and sent us the coordinates and a phone number of the boat. At 3.45am we forwarded this information to the Greek coastguard, but during the night we were neither able to obtain further information nor to reach the provided phone number directly. In the course of the day it turned out that even more people drowned in this incident. A wooden sailboat had capsized with 70 to 100 persons on board. The Greek coastguard was able to rescue 26 people but also recovered 34 bodies and an unknown number of people went missing (source 1). In the afternoon we asked our contact person for further information. At 8.15pm he sent us a voice message, confirming that it was indeed the boat he had informed us about, which sank off Kalolimnos and which caused so many deaths. He had been in contact with several Syrian and Iraqi relatives and friends of some of the survivors and of people who died. He forwarded some names of the drowned travellers to us. The Alarm Phone mourns about them and will preserve their memory.

At 4.53am the Alarm Phone was alerted on Facebook to a group of 35 adults, 10 children and 3 babies, who had stranded on the Greek island of Samos (case 2). We alerted the port authorities on this island at 6.15am and they promised to send someone in order to pick them up. At 9.25am we asked the travellers via WhatsApp if they were ok and they wrote us that they were fine. We provided them with a link to the Welcome to Greece-Guide.

At 5.25am the Alarm Phone received a WhatsApp message, informing us about 400 people stranded on the Greek island of Farmakonisi (case 3). We immediately forwarded this information to the port authorities on the neighbouring island of Leros. During the following hours we were neither able to reach the contact person nor the travellers. In the afternoon, we observed on marinetraffic.com that the two vessels ILIAS T and VOS GRACE went from Farmakonisi to Leros, thus probably transferring the stranded travellers to the bigger island. At about 5pm the contact person confirmed to us, that at least most of the travellers have been transferred to Leros.

At 6.04am the Alarm Phone was informed about a boat in distress northeast of the Greek island of Lesvos (case 4). There were 33 travellers on board and the engine of the boat had broken down. We alerted the Greek coastguard to this boat at 6.08am and they promised to rescue the boat. At 7.15am we received the confirmation that the travellers on board had indeed been rescued.

At 6.12am we were alerted to another boat in this area, with 47 persons on board, including 15 children (case 5). We informed the Greek coastguard at 6.15am and received a photo from the travellers at 7am, which showed the successful rescue operation of the Greek coastguard.

At 7.08am the Alarm Phone was called directly from travellers in distress on a boat the engine of which had stopped southeast of the Greek island of Lesvos (case 6). At 7.19am the travellers sent us their GPS position, which was still in Turkish territorial waters. Afterwards they managed to restart the engine and were able to go on in the direction of Lesvos. At 7.48am they sent us an updated position, showing that they had entered Greek territorial waters. However, water was entering their boat and they asked us for help. Thus, at 8am, we called the Greek coastguard and forwarded the position of the boat in distress. One hour afterwards we talked again to the travellers and learned that they had safely arrived on Lesvos.

At 8am we received a message from a contact person via Facebook, alerting us to a group of 50 travellers who had stranded on the Greek island of Pasas (case 7). We were not able to establish direct contact to the group, however, at 8.40am the contact person informed us that the travellers had called the international emergency hotline 112 by themselves. During the whole day we tried to reach them again, but were not successful until the evening. At 7pm one of the travellers wrote a WhatsApp message to us, stating that the group had been picked up and transferred to the island of Chios.

At 10.12am the Alarm Phone was alerted via Facebook to a boat in distress with about 50 travellers on board east of Lesvos (case 8). As the Greek coastguard did not pick up our calls at this moment, we informed a contact person of the rescue organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). He promised to search the boat in distress and try to rescue it. In two further calls with MSF at about 11am we were told that they had rescue a boat in the area in question and also confirmed that it was the boat we had been alerted to.

At 11.45am a contact person alerted us to another group of 30 people stranded on the island of Samos and forwarded their position and phone number to us (case 9). Although we were not able to reach the travellers directly, we informed several Greek authorities on the island of Samos at about 12.40am. One hour afterwards we received a confirmation from the port authorities on Samos that all stranded travellers have been picked up from the northwestern coast of the island. In the evening of that day, at 9.50pm, the contact person also confirmed that the travellers were safe.

At 10.20pm the Alarm Phone was directly called from a boat in distress on its way to the island of Lesvos (case 10). We were told that they were a group of 70 people including about 20 children and that water was entering their boat, but they were not able to send us their current position. Nevertheless we informed the Greek coastguard at 11.10pm and were asked to urge the travellers to call the international emergency hotline 112 directly. We asked the travellers to do so via WhatsApp, but were not able to speak to them again during the night. Only at the next morning we reached them. Although we were not able to understand them we realized that they were not at sea anymore, thus probably rescued by the Greek coastguard.