Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 4th of February 2016

Case name: 2016_02_04-AEG202
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 1 emergency situation in the Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Thursday the 4th of February 2016, our Alarm Phone shift team was alerted to 1 distress situation in the Aegean region. At 10.12pm, a contact person informed us about a group of about 13 people, including 5 children, who had stranded on the Greek island of Kastellorizo. We reached out to the group and they confirmed that they were on Kastellorizo and needed support. At 10.31pm we called the Port Police of Kastellorizo and informed them about the situation. The officer asked us to advise the group to move further inland and try to reach a road. The police would then pick them up. One of our Arabic speaking activist friends passed on the information that we had received from the police. However, the group stated that they would not be able to move from their current location as it was dark and children and elderly women were amongst the group. We also passed on the phone number of the local police so that they would be able to directly communicate with them. At 11.38pm we spoke to the Port Police and at 00.02am to the local police and they both insisted that the group should try and find a road. When both the Port Police and the local police seemed unwilling to conduct a rescue operation during the night and as the group seemed unable to move away from their location, we asked whether they could stay where they were until the morning unless there was a medical emergency. In the following hours different individuals contacted us about the same distress situation. We contacted the Port Police again at 1.53am but they said that the people would either have to find a road or wait. We then learned that the mobile phones of the group were losing power so that they could not respond frequently anymore. At 5.45am we were informed that they had started to move to the road and were all fine health-wise.