Travel to Australia, beach is an indispensable place, many people see full of clean beach, can not help but do such a game: dig a big deep pit, buried themselves in the warm sand, how comfortable! How funny!
Not only do children like to play this way, but also a lot of childlike adults like to play this way, but you know what? This seemingly safe and harmless Mini Game has become a "death trap" without noticing, a game that has claimed millions of lives!
In September 2014, a lively and sensible 10-year-old boy, Byron Gordon, walked with his four-year-old brother into Ben Boyd National Park, New York's South Coast. On the first day of Byron's school holiday, two little boys rushed into the beach and sat down in the soft sand to play.
They built the castle and began to dig a small bunker. Digging deeper and deeper, Byron naturally poked his head into the bunker.
But no one thought, the bunker suddenly collapsed! There was no warning before playing! The sand on the head collapsed, the sand at the foot sank, and Byron hardly had time to make a sound, as if he had been dragged into the cave and buried in the sand for a moment!
The 4-year-old brother, who was playing with his brother on one side, was stunned and rushed to her nearby mother for help. Their mother, a trained nurse, pulled out her son and rushed to rescue her.
The beach paramedics arrived quickly, taking the boy to the hospital as soon as possible. Unfortunately, Byron failed to survive and closed his eyes forever on his way to Canberra Hospital.
The family broke down. The little boy's grandfather asked over and over again, how could such a small bunker, at most as high as its waist, be possible? It's like drowning in 3 inches of water. How could this happen to my kids?!
Detective Peter O`Brien said he was just doing what all the kids would do on the beach. Every beach in Australia saw a similar scene every day, but this time it caused a great tragedy.
The death of the little boy Byron is not the only one!
In 2007, researchers at Harvard Medical School and the Minneapolis Heart Research Institute, a co-author of the New England Journal of Medicine, pointed to the risk of death from the collapse of a bunker.
They counted 52 recorded fatal and non-fatal incidents in a 10-year period, triggered by people digging sand pits at the seaside for fun. Most of the victims are between 3 and 21 years old, 29% of them are children under the age of 10 and 87% are men.
When the bunker suddenly collapses, adults and children are almost entirely buried alive on the beach, leaving no trace. Twenty-one of them received timely rescue and cardiopulmonary resuscitation; 31 never woke up.
Any search, similar news will appear innumerable times a year.
In 2001, the 17-year-old boy fell into an 8-foot-deep, 6-foot-wide bunker on Rhode Island and was immediately devoured by the sand that had collapsed. 20 minutes later, emergency workers dug him up, but they couldn't go back to the sky.
In 2005, when 3-year-old Abbie Livingstone-Nurse and his brother were playing, they fell into a five-foot-deep sand hole and the lifeguard was rescued immediately, but the child died unfortunately.
In 2011, 19-year-old Austrian National Swimming team member Jakub Maly dug sand holes on Miami Beach when the holes suddenly collapsed, all buried below his neck, and 60 lifeguards took more than two hours to bring him back.
In 2011, 17-year-old American youth Matt dug sand on Newport Beach, and the sand suddenly collapsed. He was buried alive in 2.1m deep sand. Fortunately, dozens of vacationers and firefighters rescued him in time.
In 2014, a man was trapped in collapsed sand while he was playing sand on Xiamen beach, as the tide began to flood him. The warm-hearted crowd formed a wall to block the waves, and the firefighters succeeded in rescuing him of his vanity.
In 2014, a 26-year-old man in California, USA, was killed when he was rescued after he was buried alive in sand for five minutes after he was playing with sand on the beach and did not expect the cave to collapse.
Seemingly safe and harmless beach, why "cannibalism"? Read the above news, if you still think it is alarmist, think the beach gentle sand does not kill, then let people do nothing!
How exactly is the bunker "cannibalist"?
First, in the case of dry sand, if you dig more than 0.3 meters of holes on the beach, you can cause partial beach collapses. According to the researchers, the size of the bunker where the accident occurred varies from 0.6 m to 4.6 m in diameter and 0.6 m to 3.7 m in depth.
Dry sand looks small, but weighs 488 kilograms per square meter. When a person is caught off guard against being buried in it, heavy sand may instantly press into the chest, leading to inability to breathe and eventually suffocating!
When there is no water, loose sand also gives you a chance to break free, and once the sand gets into the water, the situation becomes even more critical. When the water fills the gap between dry sand and 586 kilograms of wet sand per square meter, it absorbs those trapped in it. Especially when the ebb tide of the sea water on the sand off the bottom of the beach, people like to be dragged into the swamp, the deeper and deeper it is difficult to extricate itself!
It can be seen that digging sand holes this seemingly safe and interesting game, in fact hidden dangerous. No matter how impudent you are, you must pay attention to the following points:
1. Try not to dig holes or tunnels on the beach. If you have to feel in the sand, the depth of burial must not exceed the knee, head and chest must be exposed.
2. Before playing with sand, observe the distance and slope between the beach and the seaside, not too close to the sea, not below the sea level.
3. Always pay attention to the fluctuation of the sea water, as soon as the tide is found, immediately out of the sand.
4. Watch the kids, don't step in the hole, because you don't know how deep it is.
5. Events in the sand cannot be too long. The beach is exposed to sunlight for a long time. It is very hot and easily burns the skin and causes skin disease.
