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TigerGuy

Geotechnical
Apr 29, 2011
2,199

In the past week, two young people lost their lives while playing in sand. These tragedies could have been avoided. Was this an engineering failure?

As the engineering community, do we have a moral obligation to do better to educate the general public about hazards around them? How would we go about helping people help themselves stay safe?
 
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Tragic, but you can't save people from their own stupidity. Perhaps social media can put out the message, as that seems to be the main focus of teens.
 
Was it stupidity? Or was it being uninformed? It's fun to dig in the sand. Thankfully, I understand certain limits, like no tunneling and no deeper than waist deep.

Their families are dealing with something no family should.
 
People have raised and are raising generations of children who know nothing of the natural world. It's just all Nerf, no sharp edges, no hard surfaces.

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand
 
What do you want? Signs on every beach warning not to dig deep holes? The young man who died was 18 years old, so surely should have developed a bit of common sense in those years.
 
....or, we have a Darwin Award winner :)

The problem with sloppy work is that the supply FAR EXCEEDS the demand
 
We have, unfortunately, raised children that aren't necessarily as aware, or as in-tune, of the real world; that's the unfortunate consequence of being helicopter parents. Nevertheless, it should have been pretty obvious that sand is crazy unstable as a building material.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
My wife is from New England. Apparently, digging deep holes in beach sand is not a new thing. With attendant occasional sadness. So digging deep holes in wet sand predates helicopter parents. Children were just as stupid in the olden days.

I think this must be a continuing popular pastime in New England. I wonder if other localities feature these death-defying adventures. I don't recall anyone doing this in the San Francisco Bay Area. Perhaps the fad hasn't reached here, yet.



spsalso
 
PS:

My comments about children being stupid in the olden days are based in fact: I thought it would be a good idea to make a chlorine gas generator. It was not.

My parents, not being helicopter parents, were off doing whatever parents do. So I was on my own while I waited for my diaphragm to start working again. Definitely an interesting interlude.


spsalso
 
Everything is compounded by the fact that, for most people, their frontal cortexes don't complete development until around age 25.

I had a stupid interlude during a phosphine gas bottle replacement; I was 24

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
There is a portion of our population that is too stupid to exist in the natural world. There are also a few that will be victims of simple bad luck. Please don't ruin the fun for the rest of us with rules and legislation. As the world becomes more densely populated and more natural areas become restricted we're going to see a dramatic increase in unpreventable injuries and deaths in unprotected areas. Please, don't shut down the little we have left.
 
When you read the report at the top though it sounds a little odd.

Two people apparently with nothing more than frisbees, dug a 10 (TEN) foot deep hole in sand. WOW. I guess they though well it hasn't collapsed so far.

But really, who digs a hole that deep in sand?

Workmen die regularly in deep excavations that collapse and are not properly supported so it's not just sand and 17/18 yr olds.

Remember - More details = better answers
Also: If you get a response it's polite to respond to it.
 
It's all over our local news. I don't know how anyone could deem this an engineering disaster. Kids did a dumb thing and paid an extremely overblown price for it. It sucks, but you can't engineer perfect safety records into every aspect of life. I'm 35 and I still dig holes in the sand at the same beach this happened. 10 feet though? Nah I never thought a hole I couldn't at least climb out of was a good idea.

- Andrew
 
Just out of curiosity, what is the fascination with digging a hole in the sand?
 
I have a vague memory of my brother and I trying to dig a hole in the beach sand to China. Luckily, we failed or got distracted.

Good Luck,
Latexman
 
I dunno, it's there? Sand is easy to dig in. Digging a hole is not something we usually do so it's "fun".

Unless you're in the dunes, you are hitting water at about 2-3 feet down, so I don't know how they got that deep unless they were in the dunes. If that was the case, they should've been warned away from it by someone patrolling. Even walking on the dunes outside of specific access walkways is verboten here on almost all NJ beaches to prevent dune erosion and dune grass trampling; most definitely that one in Toms River.

- Andrew
 
Yeah, I've warned kids working on something a few feet deep at SSP, but 10' deep is amazing.
 
I was reading here a while back about people using high-voltage transformers from microwaves to do wood-burning patterns. That's stupid.
Of course, as a teenager, I got to play around with a high-voltage transformer from a junked copier. Charge up the capacitor, and make a spark about 3/4" long, with a resounding POP. I used spark-plug wires on it.
At the local beach, you'll hit water 6" down, so the guy must have been higher, more away from the beach.
But there's all kinds of hazards that you can be oblivious to, so it happens.
I think that can be a snow problem, too.
 
Wait until they discover there is water at the beach and its deeper than the bathtub.

A black swan to a turkey is a white swan to the butcher ... and to Boeing.
 
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