Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 13th of April 2016

Case name: 2016_04_13-AEG247
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to boat in distress northeast of Samos, rescued to Greece
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Wednesday the 13th of April 2016 at 3.45am, the Alarm Phone was called by a person, whose parents were on their way from Turkey to the Greek island of Samos. We were provided with the travellers’ phone number and their GPS position, which showed them already in Greek territorial waters. At 3.50am we tried to call the travellers but did not reach them. At 4.06am, we were called directly from a boat by another phone number and heard people screaming, but we were not able to obtain any information from them, due to language problems. At 4.09am we called the Greek coastguard and forwarded the received GPS position and both phone numbers, although we were not sure if they belong to the same boat. At 4.37am one of our Arabic translators called the second phone number and learned that the travellers were on the same boat. Shortly afterwards, he was told that the Greek coastguard had started to rescue the group. We called the person who had initially informed us about the boat in distress. He had not heard about the ongoing rescue operation, but 5 minutes later he called us back and confirmed that his parents had been rescued. We sent him a link to the Welcome to Europe guide on Greece.