Sand pit collapses, like the one that killed a 5-year-old Indiana girl digging in the sand with her brother on a Florida beach, pose a serious threat to several children across the country each year. is not recognized.
Sloane Mattingly died on Tuesday afternoon when a 4- to 5-foot (1- to 1.5-meter) deep hole collapsed on her and her 7-year-old brother Maddox at a beach in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. did. The boy was buried up to her chest, but the girl was completely covered. A video taken by a bystander showed about 20 adults trying to dig her out using their hands and plastic buckets, but her hole continued to collapse on its own. There is.
There are no lifeguards on the beach in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, a small enclave north of Fort Lauderdale, so there were no experts ready to help. According to a 911 call released Wednesday by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the first officers arrived about four minutes after the collapse, followed shortly after by paramedics and firefighters.
Screams of agony can be heard in the background of the emergency call as bystanders try in vain to rescue Sloan. He said two of the callers identified themselves as registered nurses, but there was nothing they could do.
“A little girl is buried under the sand, but she hasn’t arrived yet,” one of the nurses told the operator.
Another tearful woman told a dispatcher: “The men are going around and trying to dig in the sand.”
Pompano Coast Fire Rescue Department spokeswoman Sandra King said rescuers used shovels to dig out the sand for bystanders and used boards to stabilize the hole, but by the time they reached the girl. He said there was no pulse. King said paramedics immediately began resuscitation efforts, but Sloan was pronounced dead at the hospital. The boy’s condition has not been disclosed.
King said the children’s parents were extremely distraught and the paramedics who treated the children had to be relieved of duty.
“It was a horrible, horrible scene. Imagine one moment when children are playing on the beach, and then seconds later a little girl is buried and her life is in danger,” Roeder said. said King, whose department serves Dale-by-the-Sea.
Approximately three to five children die each year in the United States when sand holes they dig at beaches, parks, or at home fall on them, according to news reports and a 2007 medical study. Some people are seriously injured and require CPR to survive.
The dead include a 17-year-old boy who was buried on a beach in North Carolina last year, a 13-year-old boy who was digging a sand dune in a state park in Utah, and an 18-year-old boy who was digging a sand dune in an accident. ing. He was digging holes with his sister on a beach in New Jersey. These two accidents occurred in 2022.
“The risk of this event is highly deceptive due to its association with a relaxed recreational environment that is not generally considered dangerous,” the study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded.
Lifeguards say parents should be careful not to let their children dig at the beach or go too deep.
Patrick Bufford, a lifeguard manager in Clearwater, Fla., said staff members warn families when the hole gets too big, but sometimes it’s not enough.
“There have been incidents where people have had close calls or died due to collapses,” he said. “I want them to have fun. [but] There is a difference between fun and the dangers they may face. It’s really hard for people to understand that beaches can be dangerous. Bad things can happen no matter what. Please use your wise judgment. ”
“A lot of people don’t really think about the risks of letting kids dig deep or wide holes,” said Sean DeRosa, who runs a company that trains lifeguards.
“They know that sand can slide and walls can collapse, but they don’t seem to imagine that their child will soon be buried in sand,” he says. “They also don’t understand the real challenge of pulling a child out of the sand after a collapse has occurred.”
