Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 30th of May 2019Case name: 2019_05_30-AEG533
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted migrant groups in distress in the Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea
Summary of the Case: On Thursday, the 30th of May 2019, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two boats in the Aegean Sea. The first boat was rescued by the Greek coastguards to Farmakonisi island, the second one is presumed to have been returned to Turkey by the Turkish coastguards.
Case 1: At 1.18am CEST, we were alerted by a contact person to a boat close to the island of Farmakonisi. The engine of the boat had broken and the people were asking for help. It was not possible to establish how many people were on board. At 1.26am, we alerted the Greek coastguards and they confirmed that they would send a patrol boat to the location. At 1.53am, the contact person confirmed that the boat had been found by the coastguards, which was also confirmed by the coastguards at 1.55am.
Case 2: At 2.41am, a contact person alerted us to a boat in distress off the Turkish coast. Their engine had broken down. We reached the boat a minute later and they confirmed that there were approximately 11 people on board, including 2 children. They said that the boat was taking in water and their engine had stopped to function. They were in urgent distress and asked us to alert authorities. At 2.45am we passed the gathered information to the Greek coastguards. At 2.47am we spoke again with the people on board and they were very anxious, asking to be rescued. We were unable to retrieve their precise location. At 3.20am and 3.45am, the Greek coastguards got in touch with us, stating that they needed the concrete location of the boat to intervene. We spoke to our contact person and found out that they had left from Ayvalik in Turkey – we passed this information on to the Greek coastguards who asked us at 5am to call the Turkish coastguards as they had carried out a rescue. At 5.06am the Turkish coastguards confirmed that there had been a rescue operation for a boat with 12 people. While we cannot fully confirm rescue, we believe that this was the boat in question.
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