Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 3rd of November 2017
Case name: 2017_11_03-AEG316
Situation: Shipwreck close to Kalolimnos island, at least 4 people died
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Friday, 3rd of November, at 00:25am, we received information via a contact person about a sinking boat between the Greek island Kalolimnos and Turkey. At 00:28am we called the Greek authority JRCC Piraeus and informed them about the emergency situation. We could not establish direct contact to the people on board. At 00:57 we sent an email to the respective authorities to document the alert. At 00:59am we confirmed with JRCC Piraeus that the search for the boat was ongoing. We still couldn't reach the boat. We called JRCC Piraeus at 03:35am again. They hadn't found the boat yet.

At 05:26 we talked again to the authority that informed us about a rescue operation in the area. At 07:53am they stated that the operation was still ongoing; we didn't receive further information. At 07:58am, we saw that the Kalolimnos Immigrant and Refugee Support Group informed on Facebook about a shipwreck in the area of our case. They stated that 13 people (8 men, 4 women and one child) had been safely transported to Kalolimnos, while one woman had lost her life and about 10 people were still missing. At 11:30am we called JRCC Piraeus again but didn't get any further information. On 4th of November we received the information of the contact person that in total 4 people had died, 15 had been rescued to Greece and 6 people had gone missing. Also in the media reports emerged about the incident (see sources).