You're leaning on some "ackshully technically" definition of stranded. The fact that they had emergency contingencies in place the whole time doesn't invalidate the fact that they were stranded in the common colloquial sense of the term.

If I'm at work and my car breaks down, I'm stranded. I call my buddy to pick me up, and if there is an emergency I can ask a coworker to drive me home, but I'd rather not inconvenience them and so I am stranded until my buddy comes.

The word stranded is almost never used to describe scenarios where literally no contingency exists, because such scenarios almost never happen in modern live. To insist on such pedantry would be to effectively retire the word from common parlance.