Lifeguards and beachgoers rescued a 16-year-old girl in San Diego, California, after she became “buried up to her neck” in a collapsed sand hole, officials said Tuesday.
The teen was digging in the sand with her friends when she fell into the six-foot hole at Mission Beach, FOX 5 San Diego reported.
When her friends tried to dig her out to no avail, they flagged down the lifeguards for help.
“We saw that she was buried up to her neck; we could only see her head and her arms sticking out,” Lt. Jacob Magness of the San Diego Lifeguards told the outlet.
“Since I already had a shovel in my hand, they could see ‘don’t bother that guy, just let him keep digging,’ so I was just digging like crazy,” said Richard Mastan, a good Samaritan who aided in the rescue.
“I was so scared for her because she was way down there,” he added.
Emergency responders arrived at the beach around 4:50 p.m. to participate in the rescue.
Dramatic aerial footage that CBS 8 San Diego captured shows a massive crowd watching as several people quickly shovel sand:
The teen was finally freed from the sandpit after around 30 minutes of digging. Paramedics then checked her out and released her to her parents, according to FOX 5.
The hole was re-filled with sand after the rescue.
A seven-year-old Indiana girl was tragically killed in a similarly-sized sand hole while on vacation with her family in Florida, Breitbart News reported in February.
Sloan Mattingly was digging a hole with her nine-year-old brother in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea when it collapsed and completely buried her, Pompano Beach Fire Rescue officials told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.
While the boy was able to be pulled out of the hole quickly, Sloan did not have a pulse by the time the rescue team uncovered her.
“We were conducting life-saving techniques to try to bring her pulse back, and it never did recover, and she was pronounced dead at the hospital,” Pompano Beach Fire Rescue spokeswoman Sandra King said.
Sloan’s parents, Jason and Therese Mattingly, have since started an awareness campaign in their daughter’s name to prevent that tragedy from happening to others: