Researcher: Sand holes are deadly

The weekend death of a vacationer at Lahontan State Park should serve as a sad warning to others who would consider digging in the sand, an expert said Thursday.

Dr. Bradley Maron, a researcher with Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts and author of a 2001 paper on dry-sand hole collapses, said Cody Wright's death Saturday is more common than most people realize.

Wright, 17, of Quincy, Calif., died Saturday evening from injuries he sustained when a cave he was digging along the reservoir's shoreline collapsed on him. The autopsy ruled Wright's cause of death as asphyxia, said Coroner Vernon O. McCarty.

"Most people believe this is an obscure kind of, once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon. But the reality is quite different. We have documented between 30 and 35 cases between 1997 and 2006 - the majority of which resulted in death," Maron said.

His research shows that this type of accident is not reserved for young children. He said the youngest victim he's identified thus far was 5 years old, the oldest was 21.

The distance from the shoreline is not a factor in collapses, nor is the hole size or geographical location. The only common thread among all the incidences was the sand.

He said this was the first he'd heard of someone in Nevada dying from a recreational hole collapse.

"I think for a long time - and rightfully so - the attention in the summer months has been focused on water safety and drowning. However, I think there is also a sense of false security on the beach, parents at that time are more relaxed," he said.

Maron said digging holes seems like a harmless pastime.

"You see quarterly or seasonal magazines with pictures of children digging holes in the sand on their covers," he said. "I think it's dangerous and I think people aren't aware."

According to a report on the Mayo Clinic College of Medicine Web site, the calculated weight of 12 feet of wet sand distributed over the surface area of a 100-pound child's body is greater than 3 tons.

Maron said victims die from either aspiration of the sand into their lungs, or compression of their chests so they are unable to take in air. He said irreversible brain damage can occur within three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation.

Education is key, he said, in keeping people safe.

"If you dig holes they should be knee deep or less. I think the message here is that you are taking a risk when you dig a hole. You might think you have an ability to get out of one if it collapses, but the reality of it is you won't," he said.

• Contact reporter F.T. Norton at ftnorton@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1213.

Some victims of hole collapses

• An 18-year-old man was critically injured on Tasmania's east coast near Binalong Bay in January when he was buried under sand in a hole he'd been digging with his family.

• 3-year-old Abbie Livingstone-Nurse suffocated in the sand at a beach near Cornwall, England in August 2005. Her brother Joe, 5, was pulled free from the 5-foot hole they had dug.

• Daniel Jones, 21, died on a North Carolina beach in 2000 when an 8-foot hole he had dug caved in as he sat inside it on a beach chair. It took rescuers an hour to recover his body.

• Ivan Smith, 13, died in August 2000 in Massachusetts after a 4-foot hole he created with four other children collapsed on him when he jumped inside.