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A young girl died after she and a young boy were digging a hole in the sand on the beach at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea when it collapsed on them, burying them both, a city official said.
A girl about 7 years old and a boy about 8 years old were digging the 5- to 6-foot deep hole in the 4400 block of El Mar Drive, said Sandra King, a spokesperson for Pompano Beach Fire Rescue said. Fire rescue received the call shortly after 3 p.
It remains unclear if an adult was assisting the children with the digging at the time of the collapse. According to Sandra King, both children were in the hole when it caved in, with the boy being buried up to his chest and the girl entirely covered beneath him. WTVJ-Ch. 6 revealed that a bystander captured the frantic efforts to rescue the children on cellphone video.
To rescue the girl, fire rescue personnel utilized shovels and placed boards to prevent additional sand from collapsing into the hole, as explained by Sandra King. The duration that the children remained buried before being extracted was not immediately known.
The girl was not breathing and did not have a pulse when she was pulled from the sand. EMS tried lifesaving measures but she was pronounced dead at the hospital.
The boy, her brother was rushed to the hospital where he is in stable condition. The family was visiting from Indiana.
Last May, the Associated Press reported that a Virginia teenager died in a resort town on the Outer Banks after he was trapped in a hole in the sand that was dug near a dune, causing an adjacent dune to collapse. A 14-year-old boy died a few months earlier in Minnesota. Dozens have similarly died in a span of decades.
A property management and vacation home company in the Outer Banks Seaside Vacations published a blog post last summer, shortly after the teen died, about the dangers of digging holes at the beach. The sand’s weight can cause suffocation.
