[seaventures] sand is more dangerous than sharks
- From: "Not Young Man goheen" <1goheen@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: seaventures-repost@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 21 Jun 2007 08:32:37 -0400
ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Waves and sharks aren't the only dangers at
the beach. More than two dozen young people have been killed over the
last decade when sand holes collapsed on them, report father-and-son
doctors who have made warning of the risk their personal campaign.
Since 1985, at least 20 children and young adults in the United States
have died in beach or backyard sand submersions. And at least eight
others died in Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom,
according to a letter from the doctors published in this week's issue
of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Among them was Matthew Gauruder, who died from a collapse at an
after-prom beach party in Westerly, Rhode Island, in May 2001. The
17-year-old was playing football with friends when he jumped for a
pass and fell backward into an eight-foot-deep hole someone had dug
earlier.
Would-be rescuers made the problem worse by caving in more sand as
they tried to approach him. People at the scene said he may have been
buried 15 minutes, said his mother, Mavis.
"People have no conception of how dangerous this is," she said in an
interview this week.
Sand hole collapses occur horrifyingly fast, said Dr. Bradley Maron of
Harvard Medical School, the report's lead author.
"Typically, victims became completely submerged in the sand when the
walls of the hole unexpectedly collapsed, leaving virtually no
evidence of the hole or location of the victim," wrote Maron, an
internal medicine resident.
Accident sparked research
Maron, a former lifeguard, became interested in the topic in the
summer of 1998. He was vacationing with his family on Martha's
Vineyard when he and his father, Minnesota cardiologist Dr. Barry
Maron, saw a lifeguard responding to a collapse that engulfed an
8-year-old girl.
The girl survived, thanks to a dramatic rescue. But it left a big
impression on Maron, who's spent years tracking -- and writing about
-- similar incidents.
"It's been almost like a vendetta for him," said Dennis Arnold, who
runs the beach patrol in the Martha's Vineyard community of Edgartown
and was Maron's boss that summer.
People naturally worry about splashier threats, such as shark attacks.
However, the Marons' research found there were 16 sand hole or tunnel
deaths in the United States from 1990 to 2006 compared with 12 fatal
shark attacks for the same period, according to University of Florida
statistics.
And Bradley Maron thinks the sand-related deaths are less
well-documented than shark attacks.
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.
Overall, they counted 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.
The victims, mostly boys, ranged in age from 3 to 21 years, with the
average age about 12.
Unattended construction sites have long posed dangers, and one
incident in the Marons' compilation -- involving three girls who died
in East Milton, Florida, in 1998 -- occurred in a rain-soaked clay
pit, when an embankment collapsed. Those deaths, if added to the
others, bring the U.S. death tally to 23.
Maron and others advise the public not to let young kids play in sand
unattended, and not to get in a hole deeper than your knees.
On Martha's Vineyard, lifeguards are instructed to order children and
adults out of any hole deeper than a child's waist, and to kick sand
in to fill them, Arnold said.
Occasionally, some parents protest. "They'll say 'You're ruining my
kids' day!' I say 'I don't care,' " Arnold said.
Mavis Gauruder, who lives in Fort Mill, South Carolina, said she's
tried to issue similar warnings, like the time she came upon a father
digging a hole with a garden shovel for his young son.
She went up to the pair and warned them of the dangers. The man seemed
unmoved, so she finally told him she'd had a tragedy in her family
involving a hole collapse.
"I asked them to fill in the hole. They did, but they looked at me
like I was interfering," she said.
--
The Not Young Craig Goheen, not to be confused with The young Craig Goheen.
www.SeaVentures-Scuba.com
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