Oklahoma teen, 17, dies after his eight-foot- deep sand tunnel collapses on top of him at the beach

know better. You have to respect the sand and respect the water because hey may look peaceful and safe, but it only takes a second for that to change. I wonder if anyone bothered to warn him that what he was doing was dangerous.

I live on the coast now, and cringe when I see kids burying themselves in the sand. Usually shallow, but. An 8 foot deep tunnel though...not smart....

His friends were from Oklahoma too and most likely never thought sand would be dangerous. As far as others, doesn't seem so.

Locals should have warned him although some young folks don't want advice

Fortunately he was not as deep and they got him out with no lasting damage.

I lived in the middle of the Florida peninsula, not near a beach but the sand was just as unstable, maybe more so since it was dryer.

The neighbor was the age of my second oldest sister and he and my sisters played together all the time. My sisters helped him dig a tunnel and when it collapsed around him they dug him out. I'm not sure the adults were ever told about the situation. I was about seven and my sisters would have been eleven and thirteen.

With that example, I was never tempted into digging a tunnel into the Florida sand!

No way the lifeguards would have allowed such a deep hole and the very outspoken New Yorkers would have come over and said something. Not a shy crowd in my neighborhood!

I spent summer days at Point Lookout. Those lifeguards were phenomenal.

Grew up in Oceanside. Was at Point Lookout just about every weekend!

I haven't been back to the beach, although my dad still lives there. I remember the incredibly soft, white sand. It was such a treasure. Thanks, Town of Hempstead, for buying that gorgeous piece of real estate for us!

but I have gone to Long Beach a couple of times with relatives. Long Island beaches are truly phenomenal. I really miss them, now that I live in Northern California where you really can't swim!

Mom and Dad were working full time, as were most of the parents in the neighborhood. Over the summers the older kids were supposed to watch the younger ones but the best thing they did was to show us what NOT to do.

We had boundaries beyond which we were not allowed to go and we respected that - but pretty much not anything else. There were no latch key kids - no one locked their houses unless they were going to be gone for more than a day.

We lived next to a lake that had been dredged from a swamp when the neighborhood had been started. Although it was a city park, the city did little to maintain it until the mid 1960s. They didn't even keep the area around the lake mowed so it was quite a jungle.

There were alligators, water moccasins and all kinds of things living in the lake and the jungle around it. We knew to stay away from them and made enough noise they stayed away from us. Still, my first dog was killed by a water moccasin and a neighbor's dog was eaten by an alligator. After that the city dredged the lake again and started mowing it on a regular basis - plus the wildlife people came and caught the larger alligator and took it away. There was a smaller one, but no one told the wildlife guys.

It's amazing none of the kids were ever seriously hurt or got into serious trouble. While we were feral, we policed ourselves and kept entertained without being destructive.

The boy getting buried was the most serious thing that happened and we all helped get him out fast so he wasn't injured. What the adults didn't know didn't worry us - we just took care of ourselves.

When I was 10 years old or so, me and 3 other friends had dug a tunnel into a side of a hill. We used it as our fort and meeting place. We had candles and nudie mags and every once in a while a cigarette stolen from one of our parents. One day out of the blue it collapsed with one of my good childhood friends inside of it. I dont know how, but the two of us managed to dig him out. He was buried for a good 10 minutes and came out with nothing more than some scrapes and bruises.

Ive since lost contact with him, and Ive always wondered what he has done with himself. I know that he dodged a bullet that day, as did all of us. Since then I dont like going into caves or allow my kids to dig any type of pits/tunnels/forts. Not even snow caves.