Watch The Med Alarm Phone Investigations – 15th of February 2016

Case name: 2016_02_15-AEG208
Situation: Alarm Phone alerted to one hundred travellers stranded on Nera and one interception in the Aegean Sea

Status of WTM Investigation: Concluded
Place of Incident: Aegean Sea

Summary of the Cases: On Monday, the 15th of February 2016, the Alarm Phone was alerted to 2 distress cases in the Aegean: one case of interception, between Dikili and Lesvos, and one case, in which travellers had stranded on the island of Nera. The group on Nera was found and transferred to another island on Tuesday.

At 3.39am, we received a WhatsApp message from an activist rescue group about 100 travellers stranded on the Greek island of Nera. The contact person did not have the exact location of the group, but was going to inquire for us. Twenty minutes later, the contact person sent us old coordinates - of a location in the sea near the Turkish coast- the people could not get their new location on the island, because their signal was very weak. However, they managed to send a voice message, saying that one person would try to find a place on the island with a better connection. They asked for help and said that they were freezing and that they had many children among them. We also tried to get in touch directly with the people on the island, but without success. As we did not hear back from them and could not reach the contact person from the Ezidi Rescue Team, we finally decided to call the Port Authority on Agathonisi at 8.30 in the morning. They told us to call the local police. The police said that they would inform the military police about the case. At 9:37am, we called them again: The police officer told us that they had looked for the group, but had not encountered anyone on Nera. They asked for coordinates, which we could not provide him with. We could call them again in an hour, he continued, as they would keep on looking. We attempted to reach out to our contact person to verify the information. At noon, he got back to us, saying that he had lost contact with the group and had no new information. He also told us that he did not know for sure that the people were stranded on Nera, but had only guessed that this was the case, due to the last coordinates they had sent when they were still on the water. At 1.30pm, our contact person called us back, as he had finally managed to reach the group again. The confirmed that they were on Nera and not in need of help anymore, as they had been found and would be transferred to another island the following morning.

At 10:48am, we received a second alert - with only a phone number. We called the number, but could not communicate due to language problems and a bad connection. We sent WhatsApp messages, but did not receive an answer. We later learned from our contact person, that the boat had been intercepted by the Turkish coastguard.