By Andy Dong

Last Sunday, three sailors were saved from an island by a helicopter, after they wrote SOS on the beach and were spotted by a US air force helicopter.

The rescue took place in the states of Micronesia. Micronesia is made up of about 607 islands, scattered across the ocean. In all, Micronesia covers about 1,003,866 square miles of the Pacific Ocean. There are also smaller islands called atolls. The sailors left Puluwat Atoll in a boat on July 29. They planned to return to their homes, which is on the Pulap Atoll 27 miles away. They sailed off track and their boat ran out of fuel, so they landed on a different atoll called Pikelot, 118 miles away from where they had started. The sailors had to hope that they could be rescued, so they wrote out SOS in huge letters on the beach. The sailors were reported missing on Friday. According to Newsforkids.net, “search teams from the US Coast Guard and Air Force, as well as the Australian military, began flying over the area, searching for signs of the sailors.” On August 1, the sailors were seen by a US air force helicopter. Because of the pandemic, the search team made sure that the sailors were healthy before the sailors were picked up by Micronesia’s ships on Monday. During this rescue process, the search team dropped food and water for the sailors to eat and drink, and a radio for them to communicate.

Sources:

https://newsforkids.net/articles/2020/08/07/lost-sailors-saved-by-writing-sos-on-beach/