Lighthouse Lesvos

On the boat with 200 people,

we got a sure location from them on the phone.

We are going inside to pick them up on our rescue boat, our Red Mist.

You can't operate on 87, okay?

Just on it. As soon as we're around that head band, we go onto 87.

It's coming quick.

Romeo, Romeo, Romeo. This is Lighthouse Molyvos.

Lighthouse Molyvos, this is Romeo, over.

Romeo, radio take on eight seven.

Yeah, good copy radio check, loud and clear, over.

I hear you loud and clear also. Thank you.

We will start with training with Mr Jenkins.

But before all of that we will make our coffee, for everyone.

Then we will wait for boats,

because two days had a lot of wind and none boat came.

And just we wait today, because the weather is perfect.

A lot of boats come here.

We are 24/7 ready, always we are ready.

What we have been doing is we've been coming into this bay here.

Quite happily knowing that there are rocks there

and knowing that we have a cage on here

and we unlock the engine and just slowly come in.

So if this bursts, you still have something left, yeah,

but you still want to go home then.

You don't want to try and do anything much more.

Unless, you know, you can actually still save someone

then you make the decision.

My name is Robin Jenkins.

I'm representing the United World College of the Atlantic.

I came here just before Christmas with a rescue boat

that was developed and built in Atlantic College by the students there.

We've donated it to the Greek lifeguards here which are called Lifeguard Hellas

who are responsible for looking after this beach here

which is Molyvos Lighthouse Beach.

And is one of the shortest crossings from Turkey to Lesbos.

They come in overloaded boats which are inflatable boats,

which are sold to them or sold by smugglers over there

with a very small output motor unit which gets them across if they're lucky.

And what happens here is there is a landing site,

so that they can come here and there are lifeguards

who are able to receive them here.

The boats are very fast, and it will reach about 25 knots,

so we can get to places very quickly.

What we are doing here is ensuring the safe arrival

of the vessels that come here.

My Name is Nikos Mavreas.

I am from Kalamata.

I was a professional league rugby player and I work like a… as a personal trainer.

I got from the boat when they arrive, scratching on the rocks,

and they got petrol on the sea all over because it break under.

Yeah, and… Fuck! The smell.

On the 28th of October, I saw on the news

that a boat sink and a lot of people died.

I saw the Spanish lifeguards that was there,

to say that they choose which people stay alive.

They hadn't had a lot of hands to rescue all.

And people die in front of their eyes.

I felt the feeling that if this happened to my country, I must be there.

For that reason, I came here.

You said this baby is ten days old.

And she was born in February.

At the hospital?

I don't know, but I can ask them.

Any other symptoms you want me to ask?

If she turns a lot. But I think she looks like she's fine.

And it's always good to cover the head.

Can you translate for it?

It's very good that she is covering the head

because they lose a lot of temperature over the head.

So it's very good like she is doing. Perfect.

She's warm and nice.

I've always wanted to do stuff like this.

Just have a good amount of training from the Navy,

and currently in school now as an EMT.

And just anything that we can do to help, this is a huge crisis.

And just to be able to lend a hand is huge.

I'm Joshua Moroles. I'm 22 years old.

I'm a United States Navy Rescue Swimmer.

I'm Matt Chamberlain.

And I'm a United States Navy Rescue Swimmer.

We're here on Lesbos to assist Lifeguard Hellas

with their lifesaving work here on Lighthouse Beach.

We're out here helping whatever we can.

Just using the skills that we've learned in the Navy,

and that we've been training for, for the past four years, to assist the refugees.

Seeing this first hand,

as oppose to reading it on an article or hearing about it,

or talking to somebody back in the States about it,

it's so different because you get a first hand perspective

of what these guys are going through, these men, women and children,

these, uh… these refugees.

It's a long road for these people,

and it's humbling to know that you are just one very small link

in a chain that's going for thousands of miles,

and thousands of people, and the resources needed and…

It's staggering what has been taken away,

and what now needs to be given back.

It's, uh…

I think it's one of the greatest crises, and, uh, calls to action of our time.

My name is Ian, Ian Johnson. I am from the Isle of Wight in the UK.

I came here just over two weeks ago now.

And I am a retired doctor. Just came to see what I could do.

And I found this place,

it's Karakas Lighthouse on the island of Lesbos,

and it's one of the most dangerous landing points I think on the island.

There are lots of volunteers at various other places

but not many people down here.

And when you drove down here,

you could probably see why, it's really hard to get here.

We just do night watch,

and come down here during the day and try to make the place habitable.

It's the equivalent to a listed building here

so we can't do much to it.

But we've made it fairly weather proof

and inside, at least you can sleep… sort of.

This is the penthouse suite.

And there's usually at anytime during the day and night,

there's only two of us on the day at the moment,

but at night, there's usually six or seven people.

Two or three of them will be on the top of the hill,

they look out with a thermal imaging camera.

Down here, people just hang out and pass away the hours,

and some of them will sleep in one of the tents around the outside.

This place we're just re-jigging at the moment,

but, uh, we use lots of recycled things.

We're just making some shelves at the moment… using the covers.

We've got hundreds and hundreds of these covers from…

Look at that Yahmabisi.

That's… yeah, top grade stuff, isn't it?

And these are the transoms from the boat, so we're building some shelves.

Over here is sort of like a medical area.

It's just in a mess right now but we can rescue people up the cliffs

and give medical help.

We've got, uh…

um, rescue blankets here and some dry clothes and basic stuff.

And there we made this floor, it's just earth floor,

so we got some pallets,

and we stuffed the lining from these fake lifejackets

we cut a load of lifejackets open,

and stuffed them under to make some insulation.

So I've just cooked up a beautiful meal…

which I wouldn't have normally given to my dog, but it tasted quite nice.

We saw them make some bedding up in here,

and we keep a few blankets and things.

It looks a mess again, but every day it gets re-jigged.

The night staff come in and, uh… they might have a landing,

everything goes to pot.

So the next day we put it all back together and try and make it better.

That's our little mansion.

Refugees coming over are often attracted by the light here.

And if they hit the rocks, they are in big trouble

because the over laden inflatable boats they just explode on the rocks

and then they're in the sea.

They're at their death only about 20 metres out there.

About four nights ago, we had three boats land in the middle of the night,

and the first one was that little, little plastic boat down there.

Fourteen-foot boat with a little mic outboard on, 16 people on board…

And the first I heard, I was, um…

sleeping in a tent around the corner.

Not sleeping, just laying awake.

And I heard the buzz of the outboard motor.

We have some guys with thermal imaging up in the top there,

but they hadn't really spotted it.

And just heard the buzz of this motor,

and then all of a sudden all of this screaming,

and lots of these women and children obviously in peril for their life.

And I think they'd hit the rocks here.

Um, so there were about six of us on that night

and we all dashed down there,

and we waded it in and got the boat safely to shore, and got everybody off.

Women, children, children with, um…

A lad with cerebral palsy, we had to carry him up the cliff.

There were people in their 70s and 80s.

And it was a… a difficult night.

Really shocking, shocking for me,

I've never really heard people screaming for their life before.

It's a horrible feeling.

And then any time day or night, we put out a call

and we get local people come down with pickup trucks.

Strictly illegal, because you can be imprisoned

for people trafficking, you know, all these stupid… laws.

But we got people down here and, uh, shipped up.

We have a little transit point about five kilometres away,

a converted cheese factory.

We get them in there and get them some warm drink and things.

And they stay there for about half an hour, an hour

until the bus comes from the MSF camp.

At the moment, we're actually moving

into a kind of a stage of training in the boat

which is actually kind of quite technical.

So we worked on things like reversing the boat backwards into tight spaces,

with an anchor which is called veering back,

which normally you wouldn't do in your first days of training on a life boat.

You'd actually have some experience before doing that.

But because of the crew here are kind of picking things up very quickly,

then we are stuffing as much training in as possible.

Um, the other thing that we've been doing is put a lot of man overboard.

Uh, there will be circumstances that these guys have to deal with in this boat

which will be that there are people in the water.

Man overboard!