Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 30th of March 2016

Case name: 2016_03_30-AEG242
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to two distress cases in the Aegean Sea, near Chios and Samos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Central Mediterranean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Wednesday, the 30th of March 2016, the Alarm Phone was alerted to two distress cases in the Aegean Sea, near Chios and Samos. At half past midnight, we received alerts by two different contact persons with slightly different positions South of Chios and different contact numbers of the travellers, so that we were not sure, whether we actually dealt with one or two boats. Only in one case we could obtain a final confirmation of rescue. At 6:37am, we received a second alert via Nawal Soufi's activist collective about a rubber boat in distress on the way to Samos. The travellers had run out of fuel and water was entering the boat. We informed the Greek Coastguard about the case and they confirmed to us a few hours later, that all boats near Samos had been rescued. However, we could not find out whether the boat we had been in contact with was among those rescued.
Case 1: At half past midnight, a member of Nawal Soufi's activist collective informed us via Facebook about a boat in distress South of Chios. A few minutes later, another person contacted us via Facebook about a distress case South of Chios. The positions we were given were not too far apart: about 50m apart from each other, both South of Chios, but still in Turkish waters. We thought that probably this was the same case. As we could not reach the travellers with the numbers, the contact persons had provided us with, we called the first contact person again to ask her from when the position she had sent us dated. She told us that the coordinates showed the boat's position just before midnight. At 00:48am we received a message by the second contact person informing us that a rescue team was assisting the boat he had informed us about and that the boat was rescued to Turkey. He specified that there were 25 adults and 5 children on the boat. We informed the other contact person about the rescue and asked her if she thought that the boat she had informed us about was the same as the one rescued. She did not know. We thus kept on trying to call the contact numbers of the travellers, but without any success. Even though we could not obtain a final confirmation, we were quite certain that we had in fact dealt with one and not two cases.

Case 2: At 6:37am, we received a second alert via Nawal Soufi's activist collective about a rubber boat in distress on the way to Samos. The travellers had run out of fuel and water was entering the boat. We immediately called the boat and had an Arabic-speaking person on the line. While an Arabic-speaking person from our team called the travellers back, at 6:47am, the shift team informed the Greek Coastguard, who was not informed about the case yet. They told us to ask the travellers to call 112 directly. At 6:50am the Arabic translator called the shift team after having spoken to the travellers. She had the following information about the boat: There were about 80 persons on board, and the situation was as described by the contact person from Nawal Soufi's team. At 7am, we informed the travellers that the Coastguard was informed and we sent them a message with the number of the coastguard. We also sent an e-mail to the Greek Coastguard, and the UNHCR about the case. After 7am, we could not reach the travellers anymore. At 7.46am, we called the Greek Coastguard to ask for an update. They explained that there were several boats near Samos that had been rescued, but he could not tell us whether the boat we were in contact with was among the ones rescued or how many people were on the rescued boats. At 8.07am we reached out to the person who had first alerted us to the case to ask if she had any news from the boat, but she also did not have any news. We kept trying to reach out to the boat, without success. At 8.42am we called the Greek Coastguard again, who asserted that all boats had been picked up. However, the Greek Coastguard had not rescued a boat with 80 passengers. They suggested we call the Turkish Coastguard. We still could not reach the travellers. At 11.37am, we spoke to the Port Police on Samos, who also affirmed that all boats had been rescued, but who also could not say whether among the boats was one with 80 passengers. At 3.20pm we sent an e-mail to the Greek Coastguard and the UNHCR, asking them to please confirm to us whether the boat in question had been rescued. We have not been able to obtain a final confirmation.