Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations –2 October 2022

Case name: 2022_10_02_Eastern Med_1026

Situation: 4 people, including a mother and 4-month-old baby, stranded in Evia, Greece

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded

Place of Incident: Eastern Med

Summary of the Case: We were alerted to a group of 4 people on the island of Evia early in the afternoon on the 2nd of October 2022. We contacted the travellers who told us they are in desperate need of assistance, that the mother has broken her leg and cannot walk and that the group do not have water, and no milk for the baby. We alerted the Greek authorities and NGOs by email at 18:38 CEST, informing them of the situation and the people’s wish to apply for asylum. Shortly after we called JRCC Piraeus. They said to contact Operations centre, as the people are on land, the centre inform us they transferred the information to the local authority, Karystos, who is investigating. We called Karystos port authority at 20:30 CEST who told us there are several groups in distress in the area and they are aware of the situation but that there are only 3 people in their office and many of the locations are very hard to reach to conduct rescues. We sent Karystos authorities the information by email as well, and continued to stay in contact with the travellers, who grew increasingly desperate and concerned about the baby’s health. At 00:25 CEST on the 2nd of October, one of the group told us that they see cars below them on the mountain, we called Karystos port authority who confirmed that they found the people and they are organising how to get up there to bring them down, because it is not so easy to access. The group has still not been rescued at 06:21 CEST when the mother begs us to be taken to a hospital. Karystos port authority informed us by phone that they are continuing to work on the rescue. At 09.43 CEST we called the port authority again who told us the group were rescued and taken by the police to a hospital but refused to give any further information about where they have been taken. We cannot make contact with the group again and do not manage to establish what happened to them and whether they were taken to a hospital or not.