Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 26th August 2015

Case name: 2015_08_26-AEG52
Situation: 3 groups in distress in the Aegean Sea, rescue and safe arrival of all confirmed
Status of WTM Investigations: Concluded
Place of Incidents: Aegean Sea

Summary of the case: On Wednesday the 26th of August 2015, at approximately 3.30am, the Alarm Phone was contacted by someone who knew of a vessel between Turkey and Samos, carrying about 50 people. He said that the vessel was still moving but the phone number of one of the travellers could not be reached anymore. We contacted the Greek coastguards and informed them about the case. Already at 5am, the Greek coastguards confirmed that they had rescued the whole group.

At 9.02pm, Nawal Soufi’s activist collective informed us about an emergency situation in the Aegean Sea. Details on the situation were limited but it seemed to be an urgent distress situation. They travellers themselves could not be reached. We turned to the Greek coastguards who noted down the phone number of the travellers but were overall very uncooperative. At 9.38pm we informed the coastguards on Lesvos who asked us to tell the group to directly call the international emergency number 112 through which it would be possible to locate the vessel. We passed these information on to the group via text message. At 11.10pm we were informed by the activist collective that the group had reached land independently and were safe.

At 11.11pm, the collective informed us about another distress case. Again information were limited and the group of travellers could not be reached. At 11.30pm we briefly reached them but communications were interrupted. All we could hear was ‘help, help’. Shortly afterwards they were able to send us their GPS position (see map) and told us that they were twenty adults and six children. They were clearly in Greek territorial waters, near the island of Kos. The Greek coastguards on Rhodes forwarded us to the Kos Port Authority which noted down the contact details of the travellers. At 00:50am, the activist collective informed us that they had reached land independently. The Kos Port Authority had learned about their arrival from the group themselves. They also confirmed their arrival to us later on via WhatsApp.