Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 12th of April 2018

Case name: 2018_04_12EG372
Situation: Boat arrived safely on Lesvos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Case: On Thursday the 12th of April, at 6.49am, the Alarm Phone shift team was alerted by a contact person to a group of travellers North-East of Lesvos, forwarding us their phone number and a position which was already a few hours old. He told us that the contact was lost and a lot of relatives of the travellers were worried. We were not able to get in contact with the travellers. At 7.42am we decided nevertheless to contact the Turkish coastguard. They promised to investigate if they had carried out a rescue operation in the respective area. At 8.12am we called back the Turkish coastguard. They told us that they had not received any calls from the boat and did not carry out a rescue operation in that area. Later, the contact person told us, that the travellers were safe on land. In the afternoon we could also see that they had been online on WhatsApp again. We were not able to clarify which island they had arrived on but based on the position we received in the morning, we assumed that they had arrived on Lesvos. We tried continuously to call the travellers the whole day. At 7:30pm we were informed by the contact person that the travellers had arrived safely on Lesvos. A friend was contacted by his sister who had been on the boat. We did some research on arrivals on Lesvos and found out that three boats had arrived on Lesvos that morning, carrying a total of 128 people. The first boat with 55 people landed in Tarti, Lesvos south. The second boat with 34 people was picked up outside Korakas, Lesvos north, by the Greek coastguard. A third boat with 39 people landed in Palios, Lesvos northeast. Most probably the last boat was the boat in question.