Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 14th of September 2019
Case name: 2019_09_14-AEG573
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to migrant groups in distress in the Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Saturday the 14th of September 2019, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two boats in distress. The first one with 35 people on board stranded on Symi/Greece. The second one with 61 people on board rescued to Italy.

Case 1: At 6.08am CEST, the Alarm Phone received information from a contact person about a group consisting of 35 people, including 9 women and 7 children who needed help after they had stranded on Symi Island in Greece. We alerted the Greek coastguards at 6.22am who asked us to inform the local police. We did that at 6.24am and at 7.30am the stranded group confirmed that they were being picked up by the Greek coastguards and transferred.

Case 2: At 8.45am, a person called the Alarm Phone who said that his relatives were missing at sea. The 61 people, mostly families from Iraq had left Greece by boat 3 days earlier to reach Italy. The boat had left on Wednesday morning, between 9-11am, from the Greek island of Zakynthos. We called the Greek coastguards at 9.15am and they confirmed that they would look into the situation. At 9.22am, the Greek authorities called us to state that MRCC Rome had located a boat that might be the boat in question. They asked us to contact MRCC Rome. We called MRCC Rome at 9.28am and they said that a rescue was ongoing. At 10.24am, MRCC Rome confirmed the rescue of about 60 people from Iraq on a sailing boat. At 11.55am, the relative called us in great happiness, confirming that his relatives had been rescued to Italy.