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Pacific: sailors saved by a giant message on a beach
Three Micronesian sailors are stranded on a tiny desert island in the Pacific. It was a “HELP” (“help” in French), written on a beach with palm branches, which allowed them to be located.
(France 2)
Three Micronesian sailors are stranded on a tiny desert island in the Pacific. It was a “HELP” (“help” in French), written on a beach with palm branches, which allowed them to be located.
They owe their salvation to their ingenuity, to the four letters forming the word “HELP” (“to help” in French) which they drew on the beach using palm leaves. Surrounded by two American coast guards, the three Micronesian sailors display smiles of relief, after more than a week stranded on a small desert island in the Pacific.
A drinking water well on the island
Their call for help was spotted by an American military plane which flew over the area on Sunday April 7, alerted to their disappearance. Communication was then established, and emergency services were initiated. A team of U.S. Coast Guardsmen arrived two days later and managed to rescue the three sailors, safe and sound. They survived by eating coconut meat and drinking clean water from a well on the island. They therefore remained prisoners of this tiny Pacific atoll called Pikelot for eight days. The sailors had set off from the neighboring island of Polowat, about 180 km away. Their boat was damaged.
