Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 11th of May 2019

Case name: 2019_05_11-AEG523 / 2019_05_11-LEB/CYP003
Situation: 14 travelers on their way from Lebanon to Cyprus, engine stopped, rescued by Coast Guard of Cyprus
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case:

On Saturday, 11th of May at 11:17am our shift team received first information from a contact person about 15 travelers who had left from Lebanon towards Cyprus the day before. According to the contact person their engine had stopped working. More information was not available at that time.
We tried to establish a connection to the travelers, but we could not reach them, and neither could we talk to our contact person again. We could only monitor their Thuraya credit balance decrease, so we concluded that they themselves were in the process of communicating with other agencies. As we could not find out further information or verify the information, but the Thuraya phone was obviously in use, we decided to call MRCC Piraeus at 5pm nevertheless to tell them about the case with the little of information we had. They told us to inform the Coast Guards of Cyprus and Lebanon which we did.
At 5:45pm we were forwarded from the JRCC of Cyprus to the Marine Police of Cyprus and gave them the information we had. We agreed to update them if we received new information. We continued to get through to the people and checked their Thuraya credit balance continuously, but we could not reach them.
In the next morning, 12th of May, we could still not get through to the travelers and our contact person did not have any news. At 8:30am we called the Coast Guard of Cyprus and learned that they had stopped their search and rescue mission because they could not get in contact to the travelers and there was no new information. They had alerted all the vessels in the vicinity but none of them had spotted the boat.
At 10:20am we learned from our contact person that the travelers had been at 80km off the coast of Cyprus according to the latest news and that there definitely were women and children on board. We passed this information to the Coast Guard and the Marine Police of Cyprus. Meanwhile we could still not get through to the travelers.
At 2:47pm the Coast Guard of Cyprus called us back to inform us they had spotted a boat in distress and that their rescue vessel was going towards them at that moment. At 4:10pm we received the confirmation from the Coast Guard of Cyprus that the rescue operation was in progress and that there were 14 people on board, among them 1 woman and 3 children. The travelers should be brought to the area of Larnaca, Cyprus. We informed our contact person who confirmed that they had received the same information.