Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations - 13th of August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_13-AEG40
Situation: Three vessels in distress in the Aegean Sea, all rescues confirmed
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea

Summary of the case: On Thursday the 13th of August 2015, at approximately 9.22am, we learned through Nawal Soufi’s activist collective about two emergency situations in the Aegean Sea. One vessel seemed to be near the Turkish coast and could not be reached. When contacting the Turkish coastguard they confirmed that they would investigate the situation. For several hours the passengers could not be reached. Shortly before 3pm, the Turkish authorities called us in order to inform us about the rescue of a vessel close to the coordinates that we had provided to them. In the afternoon, at about 5.20pm, we finally heard from the group. They had been brought to Turkey and were fine.

The other vessel in distress, close to the Greek island of Samos, could also not be reached so that we passed on the GPS position and the number of the group to the Greek authorities at approximately 10.09am. About twenty minutes later the group passed on information to us via WhatsApp: they were about 40 people in total, including 10 children and 7 women. They passed on their updated GPS position which we quickly passed on to the Greek coastguards. They confirmed that two vessels had been sent for their rescue. The travellers became increasingly worried as they could not see any vessel in vicinity and had run out of water. Afterwards, the travellers could not be reached, probably as their phones had run out of battery. At 12.15pm, the Greek coastguards confirmed that the vessel had been rescued and all travellers were safe.

At about 7.30pm, the activist collective contacted us again and informed us about a third distress case. We reached out to the travellers but the connection quickly broke up. Shortly afterwards we called the Greek coastguards who confirmed that they had launched a rescue operation near the island of Rhodes but were unable to fully confirm that this was the vessel in question. At about 8.42pm, we finally reached the travellers and a woman told us that they had been rescued and were already on the island.