Quick sand rescue

What happens when you dig a 5-foot-deep hole in the sand at the beach?

Sometimes you end up neck-deep in trouble.

That’s what one teenage boy learned Tuesday when the hole he was digging in the sand off G Street on the Balboa Peninsula collapsed on him, burying him up to his chin with no way to get out, lifeguard officials said Tuesday.

At about 2:15 p.m. a boy from the Inland Empire with his family was sitting inside his 5-foot hole in the sand at the beach, fire department spokeswoman Jennifer Schulz said.

According to lifeguard administrators, the walls gave in and buried the boy to his neck.

“Sand does not have any structural stability. It will not hold up under any type of pressure or stress. Eventually the sidewalls will give out, they will always give out,” said Lifeguard Battalion Chief Jim Turner. “When it gives way, it gives way in a huge, instant drop.”

When lifeguards and firefighters found the boy, they immediately gave him an oxygen mask lest the rest of the hole collapsed around him.

“He got stuck but no one could get him out without it collapsing [over his head]. It’s a really precarious situation,” Schulz said. “You can’t breathe sand.”

Beachgoers noticed the boy was stuck and alerted lifeguards, officials said.

It took 20 firefighters and lifeguards about 30 minutes to rescue the teenager, who was none the worse for wear after being pulled out, Schulz said.

Because sand can so easily collapse, rescuers had to actually make the hole bigger, digging down themselves in a wide perimeter around the boy so sand didn’t bury his head, officials said.

Calls to the boy’s home were not immediately returned Tuesday. For lifeguards, Tuesday’s rescue serves as a reminder to beachgoers about what not to do in the sand.

“Everyone loves to dig at the beach, we just don’t want them to dig very deep,” Turner said.

“You can dig little holes, you can dig knee-deep. When people get excited and are getting to waist deep, they are endangering themselves and other people.”