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Subscribe to RSSA California beach party turns deadly after 6-foot deep sand pit collapsed on a 20-year-old man who was laying inside the pit to take pictures of his friends. KNBC's Beverly White reports.
A college exchange student in California was killed Wednesday after a sand pit he dug with friends collapsed on top of him.
The 20-year-old man, whose name has not been released, was an exchange student from Seoul, South Korea at Master’s College in Santa Clara, Calif. He died of injuries suffered when a large pit that he and other students had dug caved in around him at about 4:50 p.m. at Oxnard Beach Park in Southern California, officials from the Oxnard Fire Department said in a statement.
“I think the kids were just having fun on the beach,” Oxnard Fire Battalion Chief Darwin Base told NBCLosAngeles.com. “There was a big group of them down there. They were taking pictures of each other and from what I understand the individual was laying back in the pit and taking pictures of his fellow students and that’s when it sloughed and came in on him.”
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Firefighters arrived to the scene at about 5 p.m. and began digging through the sand with shovels and buckets. The fire department said it took at least 15 minutes to reach the victim.
Rescue crews performed CPR on the man when he was extricated, and he was taken to Ventura County Medical Center, where he was pronounced dead.
Witnesses said the pit in the sand was about six to eight feet deep. It was not known why it collapsed.
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Base said digging holes in the sand can be extremely dangerous because the sand and surrounding soil tend to be very unstable. He said lifeguards will warn people who dig holes, but the stretch of beach where the student was buried did not have a lifeguard nearby.
In the New England Journal of Medicine, a group of doctors reported in 2007 they had assembled 52 documented cases involving people buried by sand when a hole collapsed, in which 60 percent of the incidents were fatal, the Ventura County Star reported.
There are no ordinances against digging on the beach in Oxnard.
The man’s name and hometown in Korea have not been released pending the notification of his relatives.
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Leave a Comment:
"It was not known why it collapsed."
Uh...it collapsed because it's SAND. Duh.
"The man's name and hometown in Korea have not been released pending notification to kin".. Ummmm. They said in the top of the story he was from Seoul??? There's no ordinace about sand digging in Oxnard.. There will be now.. Someone there will jump on that bandwagon!!
He is an exchange student, probably from one of the universities in Seoul and his hometown is some where else in South Korea.
I remember reading that sand collapses kill more people world wide than shark attacks. This is just a case of an unfortunate end to an activity that many people partake in it is not a matter of stupidity at most maybe not understanding all the risks of the activity. I am a fireman and in 31 years have seen many people suffer the unexpected result of an activity. I offer my prayers to tfamily and friends.
Don't they know you have to build battered walls? Amateurs...
"HE DUG HIS OWN GRAVE" literally !
Only in CA!
i guess not all asians are smart ! i am korean but know better then to dig a 6 foot deep trench in wet beachsand with lots of drunks around me
Maybe because IT'S SAND!
This just happened a month or so ago and it was on MSNBC. Don’t people watch the news and know it is extremely dangerous to put your face below the grade of a sand pit? Let alone one that is 6 feet deep. It is even dangerous to bury your chest in sand or dirt. The weight of the sand or dirt will keep you from being able to exhale your lungs as soon as you breathe in.
To all the kids at the beach: Please quit building deep sand trenches, castles, or pits and think you have to put your head in there.
Could it be because sand is unstable, as the author states in the next paragraph? Maybe he should read his own article before making such stupid statements.
it collapsed because it is SAND!
I know you know this, but how could these students NOT KNOW THIS?
Again: I cant believe some people are this clueless.
Sand, depending on the moisture content, can be very stable.
It is incomprehensible that someone who has a college degree could be so dumb.
And not just him, but the so-called "friends" who were obviously just as ignorant.
I am sorry for him, but this is just so clueless.
i wonder if the other kids will post the photos of him in the pit before and during the collapse on their FB pages
About a month ago, on the east coast, the same thing happened to a child. Having grown up near a beach, I would suspect these people had no real life experience with loose sand "construction." Not realizing the inherent danger, they made tragic mistakes and died as a result.
Second time I heard of an incident like this. (First was a
12 year old boy) How do people not know to dig a tunnel in the sand? Even the
average child would have enough common sense to know to dig a tunnel in the
sand. And a college student ended up dying from it? People are getting stupider
and stupider.
That's it. We need hole-digging patrols, signs everywhere warning of the dangers of digging holes, stiff penalties for digging holes, and lifeguards being sued for not stopping kids from digging holes. We need these things because accidents never happen and every perceivably dangerous activity needs to be regulated and no expense spared in preventing anyone from being injured... ever.
Murder - death - kill
Oh, his poor parents! He may legally be an adult, but at that age....I have a 20-year-old son, very book-smart, honor student and all - but, like so many boys that age, just has no common sense.
Every week, the same tragedies...: "Beach sand pit collapses, kills XYZ", "Baby/Toddler dies in hot car". Negligence and stupidity endure. Maybe it is the lot of our species to not learn.
He must have been one of them there "book smart" type of folk.
It totally amazes me the number of so called adults who post on this site who leave comments that show they have the compassion level of a middle schooler. Yes what this young man did was definitely not smart, but how many of you did things in your teenage-young adult years that looking back caused you to think "Why did I do that?" I know I did and probably you all as well. The lucky thing is we lived through them and sadly this young man did not. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends. I hope some of you who have made the lame and stupid posts take the time to think about how you would feel if something like this happened to someone you loved. Oh wait no one you know would do something dumb, Right?
Condolenses to this young man's family. So many are quick to call this kid an idiot when I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that most of the people saying that, have done stupid things as a youth that could have gotten them killed. However, luck was on their side. To be honest, not that I ever had the desire to dig an 8 foot hole in the sand, but I didn't realize how deadly it could be until hearing about these recent rashes of deaths in the past few years. I'm sure if this kid heard any of the other stories of beach hole deaths he assumed, like so many of us, it couldn't happen to him. Hearing 60% of these collapses are fatal is pretty eye opening. I just really feel for this young man's family.
My mom and dad used to drill this into my head when we'd go to the beach as a kid and dig holes. Sand is loose and very heavy. If it collapses, it will kill you. And when the sand collapses no one will be able to find you because it all looks the same. Where do they start to dig? (if you are alone when it happens) The prospect of being buried alive and lost forever scared the sh** out of us.
Maybe I missed reading it but what were all the college students doing after the collapse? Don't want to sound cruel but were they trying to dig out the hole or were a majority of them standing around taking cell phone pics?
Darwin Award.
It still makes me worry when people say things like "this never happened when we were kids." Yes, it did. We just didn't have computers and cell phones to report our every move as we made it!
And, this was someone's child! People die all over the planet every day from having fun. He was just out having fun on the beach, a day in the sun. I pray he is with God, whoever his God is. And that he didn't suffer much.