In a rescue operation in the early hours of Sunday, the U.S. Coast Guard successfully saved three boaters who had been stranded on an offshore oil rig platform near Freeport.
The Coast Guard Sector Houston-Galveston swiftly responded to a report of three men in distress received at approximately 3 a.m. on May 21, according to Fox News. The Matagorda County Sheriff’s Office had called in to alert them to boaters taking refuge on the oil rig after their vessel sank.
No information about the boat, the circumstances surrounding its demise, or the names of its passengers was provided.
An HC-144 Ocean Sentry aircrew was tasked with locating the rig and the stranded boaters, according to a news release from the Coast Guard. A boat crew on a 45-foot response boat-medium (RB-M) stationed in Freeport was ordered to pick them up.
The three men were found and brought to Surfside Marina in Freeport. No injuries were reported.
Freeport, a town of over 10,000 residents about 60 miles south of Houston, also saw a drowning death earlier this month.
DeAngelo Phillip Jackson, a 19-year-old from Navasota, went missing while swimming with friends at Blue Water Highway Beach on May 5. Witnesses said he went underwater and never came back again, possibly swept away by the area’s strong currents, according to local news station KAGS.
A search was launched by the U.S. Coast Guard, but after 25 hours spent and 305 miles covered, Jackson wasn’t found. His body was ultimately recovered on Surfside Beach on May 8, according to search-and-rescue nonprofit Texas EquuSearch.
The Houston-Galveston Sector of the U.S. Coast Guard employs 1,562 personnel and has assisted 742 people in 410 search and rescue cases this year, according to its website.
As The Dallas Express reported, another vessel ran into trouble at the opposite end of the world last week: A Chinese fishing vessel carrying a crew of 39 capsized in the Indian Ocean on May 19. Rescue efforts have recently been scaled down, and only two bodies were ultimately recovered.
