Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of February 2016

Case name: 2016_02_25-AEG218
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 4 emergency situations in the Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Thursday the 25th of February 2016, our Alarm Phone shift teams were alerted to 4 emergency situations in the Aegean region. One vessel in distress near Lesvos was rescued by the Greek coastguards while another vessel close to the island was able to reach it independently. A group of travellers stranded on the small Greek island of Kouneli and were later found and transferred. One large vessel carrying about 125 people was rescued by Turkish coastguards after they had run out of fuel and were unable to move onwards.

At 8.51am, one of our Syrian activist allies sent us information about a boat on its way to Lesvos (case 1). We located them in Greek waters and when we reached out to them, they seemed to still be moving and not in immediate distress. At 9.09am we received updated coordinates, showing them much closer to the island. A few minutes later we were told that their engine had stopped to work and they were in distress. At 9.35am we were informed that the Greek coastguards was rescuing them and received another confirmation of their rescue an hour later.

At 9.21am, we received information from the activist collective United Rescue about a group of 30 people who had stranded on the Greek island of Kouneli, south of Agathonisi (case 2). A minute later we received a video from the group, showing them on the island. At 10.04am we were able to speak to the group and they said that they had informed the coastguards about 1.30 hours earlier but had not been rescued yet. They were, however, able to see a silver vessel nearby. In a conversation with the Port Authority of Pythagoreio they confirmed that they would forward the case to their colleagues in Agathonisi. At 10.45am the group on the island confirmed that some had been rescued already and others were waiting for the coastguards to return to transfer them as well. At 12.54pm, the rescue of all people was confirmed and we passed on to them the Arabic info-guide of Welcome2Europe (http://www.w2eu.info/map.ar.html).

At 9.25am, a contact person alerted us to a boat carrying 40 people south of Lesvos (case 3). When we could not reach the boat, we called the Greek coastguards and informed them about the situation. They noted down the position of the vessel and then stated that they were still in Turkish water which, according to our data, was not the case. We told the coastguards that we would try and receive updated coordinates and then pass them on to them. At 9.59am our initial contact person informed us that the boat had reached the island independently and the travellers were safe.

At 10am, the activist collective United Rescue informed us about a big wooden boat in Turkish waters, carrying 125 people who were trying to reach Greece but had no fuel left and were thus unable to move on (case 4). We could not reach the group directly but were informed that a helicopter was hovering above the vessel. At 10.20am, we received a GPS position of the boat as well as additional phone numbers of the travellers. After several attempts and uncooperative behaviour of the Turkish coastguards, they finally agree to take down our information at 11.34am. We asked one of our informants to let the people on the boat know that we had informed the coastguards. We were then informed at 11.56am that rescue proceeding had been launched and at 1.48pm we received the confirmation that they had been rescued by the Turkish coastguards.