Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 01st of October 2015

Case name: 2015_10_01-AEG86
Situation: Alarm Phone informed about 5 distress cases in the Aegean Sea
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Thursday the 1st of October 2015, the Alarm Phone was alerted to 5 distress cases in the Aegean Sea. At 3.59am, we received a phone call from the UK. A woman informed us about an emergency situation near Samos Island (case 1). The vessel in distress carrying between 40-60 people was, however, still located in Turkish waters. We were not able to reach the group and our contact person informed the Turkish coastguards. We then received conflicting information about the same case from several informants. It turned out that the vessel was in fact close to Lesvos Island, not Samos. At 11.40am we were able to reach the vessel and were informed that the vessel was capsizing. We told them to quickly call 112 but when they tried, they could not get through. We informed the coastguards who were very uncooperative and would not take our information. They just said that the travellers should call them directly. In a phone call with the coastguards at around noon, we were told to call the authorities in the North of Lesvos, Mithimna, who in turn confirmed that they had already sent out a rescue vessel. At 1pm, one of our contact persons confirmed their rescue. RSC Mithimna also confirmed the rescue of 57 people at 1.22pm.
At 6.23am we were informed about a second vessel in distress by a contact person (case 2). The vessel carrying 50 people was located near Farmakonisi Island and the Greek coastguards confirmed that they would work on the case. However, at 7.49am we learned that they had been rescued by the Turkish, not the Greek coastguards.

At 3pm we learned about a group of 20-30 people, including several children who had stranded on the Greek military island of Farmakonisi (case 3). We informed both the Greek authorities as well as the UNHCR. At 5.20pm we were able to finally reach the group directly. We informed them that we had alerted the authorities. The Leros Port Authority told us at 5.30pm that they would not be able to reach the island until the next morning due to the difficult weather conditions. We informed the group on the island. In the meantime, we had been informed about another group stranded on the same island. On the next day we were informed that they had been transferred to Leros Island and were safe. At the same time we learned about scandalous conditions on Leros Island, with hundreds of travellers stuck there and not cared for appropriately. Food and water are lacking and we also hear about serious ill-treatments of refugee women. The authorities tried to force them to remove their scarves/hijabs for ‘photographic evidence’ which they refused.

At 9.47pm a contact person passed on information about a group of 30 people stranded on a small Greek island called Stroggili (case 4). We received a phone number and were able to speak to one of the group members directly. She told us that there were mainly women and children on the island. We then alerted the Greek coastguards which promised to send a boat to rescue them. We were later informed that the coastguards were in the process of transferring them off the island.

At 10.30pm our shift team learned about a vessel in distress after it had left Didim/Turkey, trying to reach Greece (case 5). Our contact person felt that the situation was quite dangerous and asked us to inform the Turkish coastguard. We first called the travellers who were clearly in panic. At 10.37pm the Turkish coastguards confirmed that they would work on the case. Our contact person stayed in contact with the travellers for a long time but lost contact at 10.58pm. Fortunately, he could confirm later on that the group had been rescued by the Turkish coastguards.

Besides these five cases, our shift teams were also informed about several other boats from various contact persons who saw posts about distress situations on Facebook and contacted us. While we appreciate that everyone is trying to raise awareness about emergency situations, there were several cases in which we could not get involved, either as the cases had already been resolved and the posts were outdated or as not sufficient information was provided.