Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of November 2016

Case name: 2016_11_25-AEG274
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to missed person on Turkish-Greek border; saved
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Friday the 25th of November 2016 at 10pm, the Alarm Phone was called by a woman who informed us about a friend of her, who was stuck in a forest close to the river Evros at the Turkish-Greek border for two days. She had lost contact to him 8 hours ago and was afraid that he was injured or had lost consciousness. She forwarded a phone number and his last known GPS position to us, which was on the Greek side of the border, close to the village of Souflion. We asked her to call the international emergency number 112 and agreed to call the Greek police and other organizations in this area ourselves. In the following hours we tried to reach various numbers, including the police and the health centre of Soufli, the police departments in Alexandropolis and in Orestiada, the Hellenic police headquarter, the coastguard in Piraeus and the customs and border police stations in Kipoi and Feres – all without success. Either no one picked up or the people we reached did not feel responsible to react. Yet finally, at 1.15am, we reached the Hellenic Rescue Team and convinced them to call the local emergency number 112 and to forward the GPS position of the man. At 1.40am, we informed the contact woman on what we had done so far and promised to further work on this case on the next day. At 6.30am of the next day, we again called all the numbers mentioned above, but without success. However, the Hellenic Rescue Team confirmed to us that they had called 112 and were forwarded to a Frontex officer, who promised to search for the man and to take care of him. In another call to the Greek border police at 7am, we were referred to a number in Alexandropolis. Yet, nobody spoke English there. Thus we asked a Greek friend to call this number, who finally got some information at about 7.40am: the police had searched at the given position and in the surrounding, but did not find anybody. At 8am, we informed the initial contact woman about the current situation. We also forwarded the phone number of the border police station in Alexandropolis to her and she thanked us for our efforts. Eventually, in the evening of this day, we contacted her again and she confirmed to us that a friend of her had found the missing person. He was in need of a doctor but had survived and reached Greece.