Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 25th of January 2016

Case name: 2016_01_25-AEG193
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 2 boats in the Aegean Sea, 2 alerts from the Aegean Sea, 1 case of stranded travellers on Samos
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday, the 25th of January 2016, the Alarm Phone was alerted to 2 cases of distress in the Aegean: in one case a group of travellers had stranded on Samos. Their rescue could be confirmed one and a half hours after the alert had first reached us. The other alert concerned a boat supposedly in distress on its way to Lesvos. However, the boat reached Greece without any assistance.

At 8:30am, an Alarm Phone member forwarded a distress call to the shift team: A group of travellers had stranded on the northern beach of Samos. We reached the stranded travellers and learned that they were 60 persons with many children among them. From the contact person, who had first informed us about the case, we had the information that they were only 30, with about half of them children. Our contact on Samos made clear that they were wet, cold, and in urgent need of help. We promised to inform the port police. At 8:44am, we called the Samos Port Authority, but they hung up on us. We then called the Greek Coastguard, who noted down the position and promised to send help. The contact person forwarded the news in our name to the stranded travellers. We had agreed not to call them too often, because their battery was running low. Shortly after 9am, two boats came to look for the group, but did not take them, we were told by the contact person. We called the group on Samos to find out what had happened and they confirmed that the boats had not landed, because rocks barred the way and the high waves made it too dangerous. They asked us what to do and we advised them to stay in the same spot until we had talked to the Coastguard. A few minutes later, the contact person informed us that a rubber boat had landed on the beach. Shortly before 10am, the rescue was confirmed. We could not reach the travellers ourselves, but several contacts assured us that the people from Samos had been picked up.

After a very calm day for us, we received a second alert on late Monday night. At quarter to midnight, we received a WhatsApp alert about a boat in distress off the Turkish coast, near Dikili. We did not have a direct contact with the travellers, but our contact person did. He told us that they were 48 persons on board and in distress, even though the boat was still moving. We received regularly updates about the boat's position. At 1.30am, our contact person asked us to call the Turkish Coastguard, as he had lost touch with the boat. We thus reached out to the Turkish Coastguard and gave them the boat's last position. However, a few minutes later, the travellers were reachable again and sent a new position, which showed that they had reached Greek waters. We informed the Turkish Coastguard that the travellers were not in need of assistance. The safe arrival of the boat in Greece was confirmed to us at 3am.