The U.S. Coast Guard rescued three Cuban civilians stranded on a desert island in the Bahamas for more than a month on Tuesday. The two men and a woman survived by eating canes and rats, a Coast Guard official told a Florida news station.
A Coast Guard patrol car spotted the yards during a routine patrol on Monday, the agency said in a statement. “They noticed some unusual flags down there, some different colors, so they noticed orange,” Lieutenant Justin Dougherty told WPLG-TV. “They came back to investigate, and they noticed three people pointing at them.”
Aircraft commander Mike Allert told the station that the trio were eating rabbits and rats to survive and that they were erecting a large cross on Anguilla Cay, Bahamas. The Coast Guard released a photo showing the temporary shelter used by the takers.
Lieutenant Riley Beecher, kuswag
The Cubans said they had been on the island for 33 days, the Coast Guard said. Their boat capsized and they swam to the atoll, Dougherty told WPLG-TV.
The aircraft crew of the surveillance aircraft food, water and a radio drop to the takers, the Coast Guard said. A helicopter crew later lifted them off the island and took them to a hospital in Key West, Florida.
“Our rescue swimmer found that they were tired, dehydrated and that they showed clear signs that they were just longer in the elements that they were there,” Allert told WPLG-TV. The Coast Guard said they were intact.
Wednesday morning the Coast Guard said on Twitter the U.S. Border Patrol admitted the Cubans to the hospital and they were transferred to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency in Pompano Beach, Florida.
Coast Guard Deputy First Class Nicole Santaretti
It was not immediately clear whether the Cubans were lost fishermen or trying to migrate to another country, second-class Brandon Murray told the South Florida Sun Sentinel.