Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 27th of January 2016

Case name: 2016_01_27-AEG195
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to 11 Cases of distress in the Aegean Sea near Lesvos, Samos, Ro, Chios, and Pasas‬‬
Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases:On Wednesday, the 27th of January, the Alarm Phone was alerted to 11 cases of distress in the Aegean Sea, near the Greek islands of Lesvos, Samos, Ro, Chios, and Pasas‬‬. However, we only became active in 9 cases. In four cases travellers had stranded on the Greek islands, of Samos, Ro and Pasas. In one case on Samos, the travellers were found by the local authorities, in another case - also on Samos- we lost contact with the group. The group that had stranded on Pasas joined two other groups of travellers who were stuck on the island, so that a total of 120 persons had to spent a night on Pasas, but they were luckily picked up by the Chios Port Authorities in the morning. The five other cases concerned travellers in distress at sea. In one case, the travellers made it to Lesvos without any assistance, in one case they were accompanied by Médecins sans Frontières and Greenpeace, in one case they were rescued by the Turkish Coastguard and brought back to Turkey and in one case the travellers were saved by the Greek Coastguard. The last case possibly concerned two boats, if so, we could not obtain a final confirmation of the safe arrival of one of them.

Case 1: The first alert reached us at 1am in the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. A contact person informed us via WhatsApp about a group of 40 travellers on their way to Lesvos, in distress, because of a broken engine. He urged us to call the Turkish Coastguard. We promised to do so, but first reached out to the boat. The communication with the travellers was difficult, due to language problems, so we sent them a text message. They answered that their engine was not working and also to call the Turkish Coastguard. However, just as we were about to call the Turkish Coastguard, they sent us a voice message, saying that the engine was working again. By 2am they had reached Greek waters.

case 2: At 1:54am, we received a direct call from travellers on a boat in need of help. They were 34 people with 12 children. We asked them to send us their position. After their first call however, we lost contact with the boat. Only hours later - at 7am, we managed to reach the man, who had called us from the boat. He told us that they were safe, but that the Turkish Coastguard had taken them back to Turkey.

Case 3 and 4: At 2am, we received two distress calls concerning one or two boats in distress on the way from Turkey towards the south of Lesvos. One call was directly from the boat. The travellers told us that they were on a rubber boat and that they were having problems with their engine. They were 42 people, including 12 children and 8 women. He asked us to inform the Greek coastguard. The other alert reached via WhatsApp via a contact person and concerned about 50 travellers in distress. The positions given to us were very close to each other, so the alerts possibly concerned the same boat. At 2:13am, we called the Greek coastguard, but the call got interrupted, before we managed to give them the position and number of the first case. We tried again, but they just hung up on us. We thus sent an e-mail with all the details.
We also tried to reach the number the second contact person had provided us with. We reached someone, and even though the communication was difficult, we understood that they were on a boat and in need of help. We told both contacts on the boat to also call 112 or 108 for rescue. A few minutes later the contact person, who had first alerted us to Case 4 via WhatsApp, informed us that the boat's engine was working again and at 3:24am, he told us that the travellers had been rescued by a civil Spanish rescue team to Greece.

Since we were not sure whether the boat that had reached Greece was really the same as Case 3, we tried to follow up on case 3 in the morning. We called the contact number and sent several WhatsApp messages throughout the day, but without success.

Case 5: At 2:45am, a contact person sent us a Facebook message about a group of 15 travellers trapped between the rocks on Samos. We tried, but could not reach the travellers. The position we were given was on a beach close to a street and houses. We asked the contact on Facebook from when the position dated and sent a message to the travellers, asking them to call 112. AT 3.30am, the Facebook contact messaged that he had lost contact with the group. In the morning at 8.25am, we tried again to reach out to the group. On one contact number we got no answer, with a second number we reached someone, but they hung up, as they could not understand us. At 9.30am the local authorities from Samos told us that they were looking for the group. At 9:41am, the travellers finally responded to our messages, saying that they were safe.

Case 6: One hour after the fifth alert, we received several alerts about another distress case - 50 persons had stranded on the island of Ro. We informed the Port Police in Kastellorizo. At 5:09am, the rescue of the stranded travellers was confirmed to us.

Case 7: At 4:16am, another alert about a group stranded on Samos reached us. They were in the mountains in Greece was all what we could understand in the beginning. Unfortunately, we could not communicate well with the person, who called us and they did not understand our question about their position. We organized a translator for Farsi and at 4:22am when they called again, we explained to them that we needed their GPS position. They sent us their position, and we advised them to also call 112. Meanwhile, we called the Greek authorities - both the (port) police on Samos and the Greek Coastguard. At 4.42am, our translator had talked to the travellers and had found out that they were 15 persons, who were lost in the mountains. They had called 112, but had reached Turkish authorities. We informed the authorities again and tried to get back in touch with the stranded travellers, but without success, even hours later the phone was not reachable anymore.

Case 8: At 6:30am, a contact person called us, who had called us already on Friday, because his wife and child were about to cross. At 6.45am, their boat left Behram, Turkey in direction of Lesvos. A few minutes later, he told us that there are two bigger boats accompanying the boat, in which his family travels. He sent us picture of the boats and we could tell him that these were boats of Doctors without borders, Greenpeace and the Greek Maritime Police. We kept in close contact with the man and were happy to hear that his wife, child and other travellers safely arrived in Greece around 8am.

Case 9: On Wednesday night, at 11.12pm, a contact person alerted us to a group of 15 people (men, women and children) stranded on Pasas. We reached out to the group and provided them with the number of the Chios Port Authority. They sent us their exact position. Ten minutes later, we called the Chios Port Authority as well. The person on duty was very friendly, but told us that their vessels could not go to the area during the night, but that they would pick up the group in the morning. She promised that she would get in touch with a military station on the island to ask them if we could send the group there for the night. Just before midnight, we called her back. She had spoken to the military staff on Pasas. They had already spotted the group, but said that the people should not come to the military station, as they could not accommodate them. The lady from the Port Authority promised that she would send a boat as early as possible. At quarter past midnight, the travellers sent us an updated position - they had moved to a spot, from which they could be picked up more easily. At 5.30am a contact person informed us that the group we had been in contact with had joined two other groups of about 50 and 60 travellers. So together they were about 120 travellers waiting to be picked up. Just before 6am, we reached out to the Chios Port Authority again. They promised to pick them up within the next two hours. We passed on this information to our contact person. Half an hour later, at 6.30am, one of the persons stuck on Pasas called us to tell us that they were still waiting and that everyone and especially the children were suffering from the cold and the lack of food. We tried to give at least psychological support. At 8.45am we checked with the Chios Port Authority again, who told us that they had sent all boats available to Pasas. We informed our contacts. At 9.13am, one of our contacts on Pasas confirmed that boats had arrived to pick them up. At 12.15 we received the confirmation that all 125 people had been rescued.

Besides, we were alerted to two other cases, in which we however did not become active. One case concerned a boat with about 70 travellers that had gone missing in the night between Tuesday and Wednesday after having left Turkey for Samos. Our contact had lost contact with the boat after its departure around midnight. Another case concerned a boat on the way to Chios, which United Rescue was in contact with. They were rescued but brought back to Turkey.