Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 14th of October 2019

Case name: 2019_10_14-AEG596
Situation: Boat in distress in the Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Closed
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Monday the 14th of October 2019, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two groups in distress. A boat was in distress in Turkish waters east of Lesvos. 33 people were later rescued, but 1 child died and 1 child went missing. Moreover, two men swam to Kos in Greece.

Case 1: At 3.23am CEST, three different people contacted us about the same boat in severe distress, north-east of Lesvos. The boat was in Turkish waters and people were already in the water. At 3:34am CEST we called the Turkish coastguard who promised to start a SAR operation. At 4:15am the Turkish coastguard confirmed they had found the capsized boat and rescued many people, but at least 4 people remained missing. At 5:40am Turkish coastguard gave a more detailed report. They had found in the beginning 28 people and after a larger search operation they found more. In the end, 33 people were found alive, one child was detected dead under the capsized boat. One more child remained missing.

Case 2: On the same day, in the late evening at 11.27pm, our shiftteam was alerted about 3 trained swimmers who had left from Bodrum towards Kos. No contact with them was given and there was no location provided. Nevertheless, we alerted at 11.34pm the Greek coastguard. At 11.50pm we received the information that 2 of the swimmers had reached Kos. The third one had returned to Turkey as the others stated. A contact to him could not be established.