NORFOLK, Va. — Authorities in coastal North Carolina are investigating the demise of a teen who become trapped in a hole that used to be dug in the sand, the most recent fatality from the scourge of sand holes that continues to assert younger other people’s lives.
The 17-year-old male died Saturday afternoon in the small lodge the city of Frisco, which sits alongside the Cape Hatteras National Seashore at the Outer Banks, the National Park Service mentioned in a commentary.
Park rangers answered to a 911 name relating to a teen trapped in a hole that used to be dug in a back-dune space in the back of the seaside’s number one dune alongside the Atlantic Ocean, the park carrier mentioned. The teen used to be buried beneath a number of ft of sand after an adjoining dune it seems that collapsed into the hole.
Rangers and different emergency responders labored with members of the family to rescue the teen whilst concurrently appearing CPR, the park carrier mentioned. Efforts to restore the teen, who lived in Chesapeake, Virginia, failed.
“We urge visitors not to dig deep holes on the beach due to the danger they present to beachgoers and emergency response staff,” the park service said in a statement on Saturday.
Mike Barber, a park service spokesman, told The Associated Press Monday that the incident remained under investigation and that no new information was available.
Collapsing sand holes have claimed dozens of lives over the decades. The weight of the sand makes it difficult for people to breathe, while the sand can enter people’s lungs. The brain and other organs are often deprived of oxygen.
In late March, a 14-year-old boy died after being buried in a sand hole in a rural area of Minnesota. Wabasha County Sheriff Rodney Bartsh said Hunter Flaxbeard’s death has been ruled an accidental suffocation.
In May 2022, a 13-year-old Utah boy died after a sand dune he was digging a tunnel into collapsed and buried him at southern Utah’s Coral Pink Sand Dunes State Park.
During that same month, an 18-year-old man died while playing with his sister at a beach in Toms River, New Jersey, when a large hole they were digging in the sand collapsed. His sister was also trapped but was rescued. The family was visiting from Maine.
In 2014, a Fredericksburg, Virginia, man died at Salvo, on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, when sand collapsed on top of him after authorities said he was tunneling between two holes.
Those are just some of the examples. In 2007, Dr. Bradley Maron and his father, Dr. Barry Maron, co-authored a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine that cited 31 recreational sand hole deaths since 1985 in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand.
They counted another 21 incidents in which a person was rescued from a collapse, in several cases by bystanders who performed CPR.
Bradley Maron told The Associated Press in 2007 that he thought the sand-related deaths were less well-documented than shark attacks.
The Marons’ research found there were 16 sand hole or tunnel deaths in the U.S. from 1990 to 2006 compared with 12 fatal shark attacks for the same period, according to University of Florida statistics.
The father and son based their report largely on news media accounts and internet searches. Most of the incidents were from the last 10 years, when Internet reports were available.
The victims, mostly boys, ranged in age from 3 to 21 years, with the average age being about 12.
Maron and others advise the general public to not let younger youngsters play in sand unattended, and to not get in a hole deeper than your knees.
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