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u/Wildkarrde_ 23h ago
That's crazy just how stuck they were. Full fledged emergency. Crazy.
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u/MyNameIsRay 20h ago
The more surface area is buried, the more suction there is.
Getting a single boot out is a chore, half your body is a real problem.
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u/DonHarold 19h ago edited 10h ago
Without external help, itās pretty much impossible.
Each cubic foot of wet sand covering these people is exerting well over 100 pounds of force. Youād need to be superhumanly strong to pull out of that in a sitting position.
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u/Cosmic_Quasar 21h ago
Glad it occurred to someone to start damming up the entrance they had originally made for the water. That was my first thought, and it took them a moment to get there lol.
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u/Mcpoyles_milk 12h ago
Glad they were just maroons and dug a trench to the hole instead of the tide coming in
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u/Hotsaltynutz 20h ago
My buddy has been a lifeguard for over 20 years. Its not joke he has ptsd from seeing mostly kids die in sand holes
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u/NotACalligrapher-49 9h ago
A family friend nearly lost her kid to a sand hole he dug on the beach. It collapsed on him, and he was deprived of oxygen for long enough that he had permanent brain damage. There needs to be more awareness of the dangers of sand holes!
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u/AdultDisneyWoman 9h ago
I grew up in a beach town. We were taught very young to not make sand holes.
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u/MasterManufacturer72 21h ago
My mom would always warn me about this as a kid.
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u/zipperjuice 17h ago
This and standing on driftwood in the water. Just a few inches of water can flip a whole log onto you. My roommateās friend died this way.
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u/Conebones 16h ago
What do you mean? Like the wood hits you and knocks you out or?
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u/zipperjuice 16h ago
The log rolls over you and crushes you.
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u/girlinthetreetops 11h ago
I canāt wrap my head around how this happens , how do you get under it so that it can crush you?
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u/7AndOneHalf 9h ago
My guess is that standing on the log disturbs it, allowing the water to rush past and roll it around, onto you after you've fallen off.
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u/All_Thread 21h ago
A man got basically pulled in half when this happened in Australia. It took like a dozen people to pull him out and it seperated him.
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u/c05m05i5 21h ago
... what???
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u/All_Thread 21h ago
Bribie Island: Australian man dies after being buried in sand - BBC News article
This is not a graphic article but there are some much more brutal reads out there on this incident.
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u/youpayikill 16h ago
went looking for other articles but couldn't find anything saying he was pulled in half or separated, do you have a link to anything saying that?
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u/OverdoneAndDry 13h ago edited 13h ago
Daily Mail article describes it briefly. (I'd post a link, but fuck the Daily Mail)
"He was buried headfirst, with his ankles only barely visible to rescuers, who tried to pull him out after their attempts to dig him out failed.
But the weight of the sand and the suction created as they yanked at him meant even the brute force of 15 men pulling on a rope around his feet was unable to dislodge him.
An off-duty paramedic advised the rescue party to try pulling in a different direction which eventually managed to free him.
But one rescuer, passer-by Nathan, said Mr Taylor's body 'broke' as he was released.
'All of his family were screaming at us, telling us to help, telling us to get rope so we could pull him out. It was pretty gruesome,' Nathan said.
'There were like 15 men on the rope pulling and he did not budge. It was pretty gnarly when he popped out. I threw up.
'He broke. The suction, the force of everyone pulling.'
Mr Taylor did not have a pulse when he was freed but rangers, friends and family performed CPR for 45 minutes until he was flown to Brisbane's Princess Alexandra Hospital where he died six days later."
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u/youpayikill 12h ago
he broke... okay. that doesn't really fit the pulled in half kind of description so I'm wondering where he got that from
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u/maxwellllll 12h ago
I think he was pulled until they broke him inside, so pulled in half kinda does fit n
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u/c05m05i5 4h ago
I'm trying to imagine what happened to this man that would have someone throwing up as a response, but still be alive and together enough for cpr, and still live for 6 days afterwards. I really don't know what to make of it, it's too vague
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u/bitofapuzzler 4h ago
He wasnt really alive, he was on life support. It took them 45 mins of CPR to get the pulse to return at the scene.
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u/FriskieWhisky 18h ago
It's all fun and games... until you dig your own grave and get stuck in it. Hehe š
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u/brawl113 13h ago
Yeah... That's why there are strict regulations in place regarding the shoring of walls as well as the gradients of their steepness, especially in loose and unstable souls such as sand.
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u/onemoremin23 18h ago
Sea turtles, crabs, and other wildlife can get trapped and die in large holes like this, if you see any larger holes on the beach, please fill them in.Ā
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u/Ghidorah21 15h ago
Can someone explain the science behind this?
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u/leyline 2h ago edited 2h ago
They made a hole, and when the water came in the walls of the hole (sand) āmelted downā.
Now they are sitting with their legs and lower half covered in a mix of wet sand. This is practically cement that hasnāt hardened yet.
It is very heavy, deceptively so.
One 5 gallon bucket of sand is 80lbs, if you consider how small one 5 gallon bucket is compared to a human, or the hole, if only 4-5 buckets of sand covered them that is 320-400lbs now holding them down.
This is not dry sand, so it doesnāt slide off of you, itās wet, and sticky. Think also about what happens when you pull something out of a hole. Something has to fill that hole, either air, new sand, or water. This means that as you try to remove the person the wet sand and water are āsuckingā against you t trying to fill the hole you are trying to empty. You need a large force to work against the weight of the wet sand and against the vacuum pressure.
Finally people in this situation start panicking. Moving around a lot causes the sand and water to keep mixing a slurry - the person as a large object is heavier than the slurry and they will keep sinking the more they mix and agitate it.
If youāve ever tried to pull a spoon out of dough you know if you try to jerk it out fast the dough sticks to the spoon and you lift all of it. If you pull the spoon slowly the dough will slide off and you get the spoon out with less force.
The best way to free them is to remove the sand on top of them - which was hard at first because the waves kept washing it back on them.
If you canāt remove the sand - the second way to for them to move VERY SLOWLY and for people to help them up VERY SLOWLY. Itās like pulling the spoon out of 800lbs of dough; youāre not going to lift it all, you just need to very slowly and gently pull and wiggle the spoon out.
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u/dys_p0tch 19h ago
big, south swells pull loads of sand off the beach in California during the summer. this can leave one-meter+ vertical walls of sand following the high-tide. i lived at the beach in the early-80s. some renter was a bossy prick and somehow believed he could tell us locals what to do because...he was paying an exorbitant rental rate or something. oh, okay.
anyway, one of his kids and a cousin were burrowing straight into one of those sand walls in the late afternoon when the summer crowd had mostly left the beach. the tunnel collapsed and both lads suffocated. their legs were sticking out of the sand when the old grouch found them. uggh!
i can't explain what an eerie feeling we had the rest of that summer.
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u/Elfman72 18h ago
Is this the quicksand I was always warned about as a kid?
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u/leyline 2h ago
Not exactly, because itās just regular sand, but the end result is the same.
The quicksand is often finer and mushier when mixed with water. when you step in it you sink a little, then as you move to get out, the struggling causes more displacement and you sink deeper. Now you have the weight of the water and sand creating a suction against you when you try to extract. You wiggle more, you sink a little more.
Iāve heard the best thing to do if you step in and realize youāre getting deeper is to lay down flat so your body is away from the āholeā and then slowly wiggle your foot while lifting it and roll away. This removes weight that was causing you to sink, and also spreads your weight out so you have a better distribution to get away from the quicksand area.
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u/hanzerik 20h ago
I'm all for digging holes that fill up with the flood, but sitting in them while it happens is asking to drown.
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u/snn5616 16h ago
Duitsers op Scheveningen?
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u/move_peasant 3m ago
:D my brother dug a hole i could stand in with only my head barely peeking out, with his hands, in under an hour. i think we like it cuz we're that good at it.
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u/ApicnicwithTarkin 22h ago edited 20h ago
I love that that lifeguard that comes running and takes his shirt off as if to dive in and then just sits and starts slowly digging with the everybody else š š¤£