For three days he drank milk powder mixed with sea water. The 50-day-old infant, whom the local community of Tilos named “Iona” – after the monk who arrived at Tilos by sea and built the monastery of Agios Panteleimon -, his mother, father, uncle and ten-year-old brother were on the rotting boats of traffickers off the coast of Turkey. The wave brought them to a type – because of the rocks – beach of the island of Dodecanese. It’s Friday night.
At dawn on Saturday, the municipal, police and port authorities of the island receive information from 112 that a family with a newborn baby lost somewhere on the island is missing from the group of refugees who had arrived. Immediately, the municipality mobilizes, with information received from other arrivals and from the mobile number provided to them by 112, and sends a vehicle with deputy mayor Kyriakos Sakellaris and local volunteers to locate them.
Last Friday late at night, a family arrives at a rocky, inaccessible beach of Tilos. With them was a 50-day-old baby, whose mother fed him powdered milk with seawater for three days.
It’s about 11 o’clock in the morning. “They had climbed the steep mountain trying, as everything seemed, to reach the Great Village. At this point there is no road, there is not even a path”, the deputy mayor of Tilos tells “K”. With them, the Police of the island and the Coast Guard.
“The fortunate thing – if one can say such a thing – was that they had thought of returning to the beach, after realizing that the ascent and descent of the mountain in the direction of Chora was a great risk for their lives”, as Kyriakos Sakellaris tells us .
Fortunately the Coast Guard boat arrives, but is unable to approach due to weather conditions. The authorities and volunteers of Tilos, however, are experienced in rescues, since, as the mayor Maria Kamma tells us, “every day between 30 and 60 people arrive on our island from the Turkish coast”. Thus, they had with them a children’s inflatable boat and the necessary things to keep the people as healthy as possible.
“The volunteers arrived by swimming”
“Swimming, our volunteers approached the beach with the boat and took the family on board. The rest of us were on the Coast Guard boat, trying with a rope to bring the boat to the boat and get the people on board, along with “Ionas”, the baby that the mother had in her arms”, Kyriakos Sakellaris tells us.
The infant’s mother, like her husband’s brother, collapses. She can’t even hold her baby. It was impossible for her to cope – the wave and the water entering the children’s boat terrified her even more. A volunteer offers and takes it in his own arms, to protect it. “Jonah” is now in safe hands.
The not-two-month-old baby gets on the boat and Kyriakos Sakellaris does everything he can to keep it warm. “It was wet. I took off his clothes, gave him some other clothes, wrapped him so he wouldn’t get cold”, he tells us. “The most shocking thing? With the little English the infant’s father knew, he explained to us that for three days he drank powdered milk with sea water,” he adds.
End: Video of the agonizing rescue of a 50-day-old baby pic.twitter.com/t0dkciw1lH
— Kathimerini_Web (@KathimeriniWeb) August 19, 2024
Soon after, the family is taken to the clinic of Tilos, where the rural doctors, also exhausted by the 4,000 tourists currently on the island, give them first aid and examine them to diagnose their condition. The deputy mayor and his wife rush to the pharmacy to buy milk and bottles for the infant and find him clothes to keep him warm, healthy and, of course, full.
In the next few hours, if all goes well, they will be transferred to the Reception and Identification Center of either Leros or Kos. Besides, the Hospitality Center of Tilos is at its limits, as the mayor of the island, Maria Kamma, informs us.
Rescue pregnant woman from difficult paths
At 7 pm last Friday, the authorities of the island again received information from arrived immigrants that there is another family, with a pregnant woman, who has been lost on the difficult, rocky paths of Tilos. “Another… ordinary day for our island”, as the other vice-mayor Spyros Aliferis tells “K” mockingly, with a touch of despair.
Video of the agonizing rescue of a pregnant woman, trapped on a mountain in Tilos pic.twitter.com/hOoRBGFXJi
— Kathimerini_Web (@KathimeriniWeb) August 19, 2024
“We took with us – the Army, the Coast Guard and us – refugees in order to show us the place. It is approximately on the side of Agios Antonios, in the northern part of the island”, the deputy mayor tells us. They tried to approach the spot from the nearest road, which was about 2.5 kilometers from the place the newly arrived refugees had pointed out. They approached the pregnant refugee after difficulty – especially with the necessary stretcher. “We understood that it is impossible to transport her. Anything could happen to the woman in such rugged places,” says Spyros Aliferis.
The deputy mayor informed 112 that a flying vehicle will definitely be needed to rescue the young pregnant woman. The hours pass and, around 2-2.30 in the morning, an EMAK boat arrives from Rhodes, which rescues the woman’s husband, who had managed to return to the beach to look for a mobile phone signal and help. The pregnant woman was not at all able to move either up or down.
Until the helicopter arrived in the early hours of Saturday, initially, the deputy mayor and the island’s volunteers stayed with the pregnant woman. Then dawned with her, vigilant guard, a porter.
“EMAK realized immediately that there was no possibility of approaching on foot the place where the refugee had remained and they called a helicopter, which could, of course, come as soon as dawn,” recalls Spyros Aliferis speaking to “K”.
Until the helicopter arrived in the early hours of Saturday, the deputy mayor and the island’s volunteers stayed with the pregnant woman, initially, who had cereal bars, water and blankets with them, so that they managed to keep the woman in a condition where she could at least to communicate.
Then with her dawned, a watchful guard, a porter, that he might check her condition for whatever might occur during the night to the refugee in that condition. In fact, as the mayor of the island has said, “the few porters who serve on the island have exceeded the limits of their endurance for a long time and yet they do not back down. They do not accept the loss of any human life.”
At 9 am on Saturday morning, the rescue was now a fact. The woman and her husband, who together with others had found themselves on the EMAK boat again in the same way – a children’s inflatable boat due to the raging meltdowns –, were rushed to the Rhodes hospital. As Spyros Aliferis informs us, it was established that everything was going well.
“It’s a repeat of 2015”
“We are under a lot of pressure. Two or three boats arrive on our island every day, with 30 to 60 refugees in total. At the moment, there are 110 people in the Hospitality Center of Tilos. Every 4-5 days, some are transferred, as planned, to the KYT of Leros or Kos, which are also at a limit point”, are the first words of the mayor of Tilos Maria Kamma in the communication she had with “K”.
Many refugees, as she tells us, arrive on the island in a miserable condition, beaten by traffickers from the coast of Turkey, forced to board the boat that will bring them to Europe, as their own testimonies say. “With 4-5 porters on duty at the moment and two rural doctors, what is the first thing to offer these people? There are others who arrive sick, others with diabetes and a host of other issues. How to diagnose and take care of all this with so little means?’ Maria Kamma wonders.
With 4-5 dockers on duty right now and two rural doctors, what are you going to offer these people first? Fortunately the reflexes of the local community and our volunteers are excellent.
On such days, however, the tourist traffic in Tilos is at its peak. Under other circumstances, because the island’s Hospitality Center is overloaded, the arrivals would be funneled into tourist beds. Now there is no such possibility. Thus, as they say to “K”, the mayor and the deputy mayor Kyriakos Sakellaris, in addition to the containers, have set up tents for shade, mattresses so that people do not sleep on the ground. They have also installed chemical toilets, taps to wash and for any other need.
“During this period, however, the island’s restaurants cannot provide the extra, necessary portions of food due to tourism. Thus, we exhaust the municipality’s resources. Besides, the subsidy to the municipalities for each person is not even six euros per day for their food,” says Maria Kamma. “On the other hand”, he adds, “we can’t even find a place on the ships to transport them to the KYT of the surrounding islands”.
“Fortunately, the reflexes of the local community and our volunteers are excellent,” he adds. “We cook for them, we offer them everything we can for their personal hygiene, but it’s not enough. We are living, I would say, moments of 2015 again, even if our voice is not heard, and if our resources and strength are exhausted.”
Center photo: Volunteers rescue “Iona”, his mother and his ten-year-old brother. (Courtesy: Deputy Mayor of Tilos, Kyriakos Sakellaris)
2024-08-19 14:01:57