Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 7th of August 2017

Case name: 2017_08_07-AEG298
Situation: 45 persons rescued to Rhodes
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday, the 7th of August 2017, at 1:45am, we received a Whatsapp message from a contact person about travellers, mostly families with children, in distress in the Aegean Sea. The message said that the travellers were on an overcrowded boat and that they had been left alone by the smugglers. We immediately reached out to the travellers, but had difficulties to communicate with them. We nevertheless found out that they had departed from Turkey around 11pm local time. They asked us to inform the Coastguard and gave us more details about their condition: they were about 45 persons on board, 3 persons were severely injured. Unfortunately, they could not tell us where exactly they were located. We told them to call 112 and find a way to send us their GPS coordinates. After this first communication, we could not reach them again. At 2.28am, we eventually reached them again and they sent us a location on Google maps and a screenshot via Viber. They were near Rhodes Island, just in front of Afantou. We called the Greek Coastguard, who said that they were not too far from the boat and would look for them. We forwarded this information to the travellers. At 3.56am, the Greek Coastguard informed us that they had picked up the travellers and were on their way to Rhodes. We couldn't confirm this information with the travellers, as they we could not reach them any longer. We sent them a message with some information about the arrival in Europe. At 2.30pm, a search and rescue organisation from Rhodes confirmed via e-mail that all travellers had been rescued.