Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 20th of July 2015

Case name: 2015_07_20-AEG23
Situation: Travellers lost on Samos Island needing support; vessel in distress in Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded (rescue assumed in one case and confirmed in the other)
Place of Incidents: Samos Island, Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday the 20th of July, at around 9am, the Alarm Phone was contacted by a man who alerted our shift team to a group of about 40 travellers somewhere on a Greek island. The connection broke down before he could pass on further information and he could not be reached afterwards. At about 10.30am, a woman called us from the same group of travellers. She forwarded her GPS position showing that they were on Samos Island, Greece. We notified authorities in Greece to the situation, including the UNHCR in Greece who told us that they would get in touch with the group and call for rescue as well. In the meantime, we stayed in contact with the group until about noon, when we could not get through to them. Soon afterwards, the UNHCR informed us that they had notified the police and coastguards to the group. As they were in a very remote spot, the UNHCR suggested that the police would have difficulties to reach them but the coastguards might be able to do so. At around 1pm, the travellers contacted us again - they had found a nearby monastery. While they stated that the people there were unwilling to help them, they were happy to be regularly updated by us and to hear that rescue services were notified. Afterwards, contact to the group could not be established anymore. At 5pm, the UNHCR could not provide any new information but suggested that the search for the group was underway and that it would take time to locate and transport them. While their rescue cannot be conclusively confirmed, it can be assumed.

On the same day, at about 2pm, Nawal Soufi’s activist collective alerted us to another distress situation in the Aegean Sea. They knew of an emergency case at sea and forwarded phone numbers as well as coordinates of the passengers. The travellers could not be reached. Following our information, the Italian authorities had alerted the Turkish coastguard to the case already. We contacted MSRCC Ankara who were, however, unaware of this distress case. At about 3pm, MSRCC Ankara reached out to us and said that 33 people had been rescued. They did not want to tell us where the people would be disembarked. Finally, at about 8.30pm, a contact person confirmed that the vessel in question had been rescued by the Turkish coastguards.