Why You Should Never Dig Holes Deeper Than 2 Feet at the Beach? Coastal Science Expert Warns
A fun day at the beach can quickly escalate into a life-altering situation. A coastal science expert Stephen Leatherman called attention to the unstable nature of sand and how it could risk the lives of people. A report revealed that sandholes took the lives of 31 people between the period of 1997 and 2007 in the U.S., per The Conversation. The victims were mostly kids and 87% of the others were male. Leatherman, a professor at the Florida International University, explained the basic characteristics of sand and its behavior when in contact with other objects.
Sand is a tricky subject, as most assume it is a type of material. However, the expert said that sand is a category of material size. The size of the individual units ranges from 0.0025 to 0.08 inches (0.06 to 2 millimeters) in diameter and the type depends upon the material it is composed of. Quartz sand is made up of silicon dioxide, the most common type in beaches, while coral sand beaches on tropical coasts mainly contain calcium carbonate. Experts recommend that the maximum depth of the sand hole must not exceed 2 feet (0.6 meters). Another way of measuring the depth includes keeping the hole below the knee height of the shortest person in any group, per the source.
Leatherman had helped with the investigations of a 7-year-old girl’s death after she fell in a nearly 5-foot (1.5 meter) sand hole in February 2024. The young victim and her brother had dug up a deep sand hole on the beach in Lauderdale-By-The Sea. Unfortunately, the sand collapsed on them and claimed the young girl’s life while her brother was rushed to the hospital, per a video by CBS Miami. The incident sparked a race to rescue the trapped children and the local firefighters reached the location after a few minutes. Despite the frantic efforts, it was too late to rescue the girl.
Dealing with sand requires expertise as it is both heavy and unstable. Hence, rescuing people trapped in the sand can become challenging even for firefighters. Suffocation is the primary cause of fatalities in cases where the victim is sand-trapped with only 3 to 5 minutes left to spare. This is because as the rescuer attempts to scoop the sand away from the hole, the sand beneath their feet will collapse due to their weight refilling the sand hole with more sand. Therefore, several people attempting to rescue a victim by clearing sand from the excavation area are riskier than helpful to the case. In addition, a 2007 report stated that more people die of sand burial suffocation than from shark attacks, per CBS News.
The victims of sand holes revealed that more victims were between the ages of 3 to 21, according to a study published in the journal The New England Journal of Medicine. The sand holes causing the fatalities were described to be about 2 to 15 feet in diameter and 2 to 12 feet in depth. This breaches the recommended depth of 2 feet by experts. There are no set conditions for a sand hole incident as it may happen at any point in time. The expert also noted that sand is more stable when it’s wet because of the increased surface tension between water and sand grains that could potentially maintain a pile of sand longer.