Teen hurt in sand collapse at Santa Cruz beach - had dug 6 feet deep tunnel

[Liberal_in_LA]

Teen hurt in sand collapse at Santa Cruz beach

A teenager is in critical condition after a sand tunnel he was digging at a Santa Cruz County beach collapsed on top of him over the weekend.

Seventeen-year-old Ryan Buchanan was on a camping trip with a large group from Creekside Community Church in Alamo when the accident happened Saturday afternoon at Sunset State Beach.

Park officials say Buchanan and another boy were digging the tunnel about six-feet deep when the sand collapsed and buried him. The teen was trapped for about 15 minutes before lifeguards and friends were able to dig him out.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/06/27/state/n103956D25.DTL#ixzz1QVAtihcD

[medeak]

1. where was church leader when they were digging 6 ft?

Church elder Brian Fuery told KTVU-TV that Buchanan remains unconscious but that his brain waves appear to be responding to people's voices.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2011/06/27/state/n103956D25.DTL#ixzz1QVCdMrrX

[Sequoia]

2. Where was any adult. This has happened before in the same place.

[Codeine]

3. He's seventeen.

A bit beyond the age where he should need constant adult supervision.

[yardwork]

8. Still a minor and teenage brains aren't fully developed. The whole point of adult supervision

is to protect young people from doing unsafe things, because teenagers tend to do unsafe things. Where were the counselors? This must have taken hours.

[Obamanaut]

13. And despite not being fully developed, another birthday and a 17 year

old brain magically has matured enough to help select our national leaders, who will then find a war to send that 18 year old to so that he can be mangled or killed.

It's wonderful what one birthday will do.

[frebrd]

4. I wonder if this a brand of church that........

doesn't believe in Science. You'd think the kid would have known that digging a tunnel in sand isn't the same as digging a tunnel in clay.

Digging in sand is easy because grains of sand separate easily.

:shrug:

[BadgerKid]

6. Teaching logical inferences isn't some churches' strong suit.

:shrug:

[Raine]

20. Yeah because only people that go to church

are that stupid and people that believe in science never do stupid things even when they're 17 and think they're invincable. :sarcasm:

[damntexdem]

5. He's lucky to be alive -- if he lives and is not permanently brain injured.

What part of "six feet under" did he not understand?

[murphyj87]

7. When I was young....

When I was young and living in the North (just above the 55th parallel anyway) we used to dig snow tunnels from house to house in September and they stayed there until April. Of course we melted the snow walls with our hands so they turned into ice, which is one of the reasons that they didn't collapse.

We used to go to school in the dark and come home from school in the dark, since we had only four hours of daylight during the winter, and twenty hours of daylight during the summer.

[yardwork]

9. That's so cool!

[murphyj87]

19. Definitely cool.....cold even...

The temperature during the winter ranged between -40 and -60 degrees F. With 20 hours of daylight in the summer, during July and August it often got up to +90 F.

One Saturday morning, I went outside to play without a balaklava (I was about 6) and it was -50. I ended up with frostbite on my face which is still gets infected from time to time.

[TygrBright]

10. Seventeen years old. Dude definitely gets a Darwin nomination. n/t

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. Why am I not surprised?

Most young people do not know just how much bracing you need for a successful sand tunnel... aka not collapsing.

But this is an activity that many kids engage in at the beach, so of course it could not be dangerous, until well it is.

[crazyjoe]

12. what a dope, how do you call this an "accident" ?

[nadinbrzezinski]

14. If there is more to this story

you are talking of a criminal investigation. That is why.

[yawnmaster]

21. It may not be an accident, as it could have been prevented, but loosly, it is, as this just happens

to be one of those tunnels that collapses with the kid in the wrong place.
Kids dig miles of tunnels every year. Most collapse with no injury. This one was unlucky.

[KittyWampus]

15. Young man died doing something similar here a while back. Sad.

[Gemini Cat]

16. I did a lot of stupid things at 17.

Most of us did stupid dangerous things at 17, if we are honest with ourselves. Eventually we grew up.

Poor kid I hope he is ok.

[yawnmaster]

22. yep. True. and most of the time things work out. Actually, rarely they do not...

and the rare cases can be tragic. I suspect it will always be like that.

[FLPanhandle]

17. When I was a teenager, we dug a few sand tunnels

Never one 6 ft in though. Teenage boys do stupid things. Good luck to him.

[WatsonT]

18. Think of permanent structures constructed entirely out of loose sand

See why that wasn't a wise decision?