Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 14th of September 2015

Case name: 2015_09_14-AEG70
Situation: Three boats in distress near the Greek islands of Lesvos and Samos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases:: On Monday the 14th of September 2015, the Alarm Phone was informed about three vessels in distress in the Aegean Sea, close to the Greek islands of Lesvos and Samos.

At 6.30pm the Alarm Phone received an emergency call from Nawal Soufi’s activist collective, which alerted us to a boat in distress with many children on board and provided us with its GPS coordinates. As these showed the travellers close to the shores of the Greek island of Lesvos, our shift team immediately called the Greek coastguard. However, without being able to pass on a phone number of the travellers, the shift team had to repeatedly demand a rescue operation until the Greek coastguard stated that they would send out a rescue vessel after all. At 8:06pm we received an email from Nawal Soufi’s activist collective, stating that the group had now reached land. When trying to obtain also a confirmation from the Greek coastguard, the authorities were once again very uncooperative and unwilling to provide further information. Some time later, our contact person informed us that the travellers had reached Lesvos Island independently.

Beyond that, on the same day the Alarm Phone was alerted to two other boats in the Aegean Sea. Via Facebook we received the position and telephone number of a boat between the Turkish coast and the northern shore of Lesvos. After speaking directly to the travellers we could confirm that they were safe and had presumably already reached Lesvos.

Already in the early morning a contact person had informed us via WhatsApp about a boat in distress north east of the Greek island of Samos. Unfortunately, direct contact to the boat could not be established, thus rescue cannot be confirmed.