This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

Quick sand?

I have been living in Ocean City for 10 years now. I had an experience that I would like to share with our local residence.

Our home here will be our full time residence in just a few short years. We spend every weekend here and try to enjoy as much of the shore that we can. Friday, January 24th, was very cold, about 18 degrees. Because the sun was shining and the wind was not too bad, we decided to bundle up and take a walk on the beach. Boots, gloves, scarves, hats , coats, we were ready for our walk.

Just three blocks from the beach we were enjoying our walk, both glad we had bundled up. The beach was beautiful. The sun was shining brightly and no wind to speak of. We walked to the water line and found some beach glass and noticed we were the only people on the beach. We had it all it ourselves. Perfect.

Find out what's happening in Ocean Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

All of a sudden my boots sunk into the sand. This was not a soft sand sink, this was more of a quicksand sink. Up to my knees now and being sucked down fast, I looked to my finance' and his boots were going under too. Within 5-10 seconds I had sunken to my hips. I could feel my feet being pulled down. I panicked and screamed for help and remembered that we were alone on the beach. Bob was still struggling but he was about 3 feet away from me. I was trying to grasp the sand with my hands and pull myself out and was still sinking. Bob was sinking and trying to pull on my coat to get me out of the area. Finally he got to a stable sand area and was able to pull me by the hands out of the sinking area. I was wet and terrified as was he.

We made our way home and had time to think about it. What if a pet or a child or a lone jogger etc. had come upon a area like this. We are both 64 years old and in pretty good shape, and we had each other there to help. I have been around the ocean my whole life and have never even heard of such a thing happening. It was not a soft sand area, it literally dropped and sucked me down approximately 35 inches and was still trying to pull me down when Bob was able to grab my hands.

Find out what's happening in Ocean Citywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

I am not really sure what can be done except to let people know that this is possible. I looked online that evening and found nothing about why this would have happened. I thought it might have to do with the sand freezing and thawing because the weather was so cold.  We were not close to the water line, just looking for treasures on the beach.    I will never walk on the beach again without thinking of that experience.


We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?