‘HELP’ sign on beach points rescuers to men stuck nine days on remote Pacific atoll WPXI [Video]

Three men stranded on an uninhabited Pacific island survived for more than a week and used palm fronds to spell out HELP on the beach – leading to rescue by Navy and Coast Guard aviators who spotted the sign from several thousand feet in the air.

They had embarked March 31 in a 20-foot boat with an outboard motor from Pulawat Atoll, a small island with about an estimated 1,000 inhabitants in the Federated States of Micronesia about 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) east of the Philippines.

The men were fishing when they hit a coral reef, putting a hole in the boat’s bottom and causing it to take on water, Lt. Keith Arnold said in a Coast Guard video.

A Coast Guard ship, the Oliver Henry, picked up the men Tuesday and took them back to the atoll where they had set out nine days earlier and 100 miles (160 …