The little boy who was killed is the grandson of a teacher at my daughter’s school. This is a small community, and a popular family beach (heck…I walk near here nearly every morning), and we’re all in shock…but nothing compared to what this family is going through.
We’ve known about the dangers of collapsing sand bridges and caves for years, and have always warned our daughter to avoid them when playing around the dunes. Please…if you ever take your kids to the beach, make sure they understand that waves and rip tides aren’t the only dangers.
Yup.
Our personal case in point occurred a few years ago as we (us + extended family) were eating sandwiches across the street from the main Cape Hatteras beach and emergency vehicles began streaking in by beach and road.
A 20 yo guy had dug himself a box-shaped pit in the beach, and was sitting in it, in a beach chair, when the walls collapsed. They were not able to dig him out quickly enough. Sand is much heavier than people imagine when they’re goofing around with it. That guy made it into the Darwin Awards.
As an inlander, I’m not really sure what sand dunes are. In the picture accompanying the article, what exactly are we looking at? I’m trying to figure out what collapsed…
With winter coming on in parts of the country it is important to remember that snow caves/tunnels can do the same thing under the wrong conditions, too warm, wrong snow type.
Some “ice plants” are edible, and others are hallucinogenic. Sounds like there’s a whole agricultural industry waiting to happen there in Southern California…
The caption tells you exactly what to look for. There’s a cave in the dune directly under the little ranger booth at the top of the bluff. At this point, authorities don’t know if it was natural or if someone (maybe even the kids themselves, as they lived nearby) dug it over a period of weeks. In any case, they were digging there a couple of days ago when the cave collapsed.
While iceplant is an introduced and invasive species (I hate it!), dunes covered with native grass will collapse as well when they’re undermined like that.
The ice plants interfere with the movement of the dunes, they stabilize the sand, but it is deceptive stabilization. The native vegetation allows dune movement, it would have been much more difficult to dig a cave in such sand as it would have been a loser substrate.
I am also not familiar with bluffs. Is the ranger booth at 11:00 or at 3:00? If it’s at 11:00, I think I see what collapsed. If it’s at 3:00, I still don’t understand what I’m looking at.
The cave is directly below the front right corner of the ranger shack on the hill in front of the house with the tile roof and southwest style architecture. I believe the photo pre-dates the cave collapse. Plenty of bluffs in Kentucky all around Berea.
I thought the caption on the photograph was pretty darned self-explanatory. There’s only one big black hole anywhere in the picture and it’s right under the only kiosk that isn’t sitting flat on the beach.
