You're dealing with one of the
fundamental forces of nature here,
but unlike a hurricane
or even a landslide or a flood
or somethin', you can't see it.
It's lying there in wait
all the time
twenty-four hours a day.
You might just be walking along
minding your own business
and once it's got you,
it's going to hurt you.
It conforms to every single nook
and cranny of your body.
You literally cannot
pull yourself out
even if you're just up
to your ankles.
People have always been just
terrified of the idea of quicksand.
Its that awful feeling
that somehow the ground
which you know is solid and you
walk on is somehow not there,
and you're going to take a step,
and you're going to disappear.
Since the earliest days
of the cinema
it was one of Hollywood's favorite
ways to dispose of the bad guy.
Or trap an innocent victim.
Producers created bottomless pits
of quicksand out of peat moss,
oatmeal, even wine corks
And helped make the soggy
stuff legendary.
But quicksand is more than
just a clever plot device.
It's real... It's dangerous...
And it's more common
than most people believe.
Quicksand is found along
coastlines, on riverbanks,
even in our own backyards.
Though one of nature's
deadliest traps,
quicksand is made of
just two basic ingredients...
sand and water...
its a simple recipe - for disaster.
In 1997,
twelve year old Sara Cody and
a friend went for a stroll
on what looked like
a perfectly ordinary beach,
on the northwest coast of England.
We were staying at
my Auntie Jackie's holiday flat
for the weekend,
me and my friend Georgina.
We went out on the sand
we have been out before
and there is actually signs
saying quicksands
and it was a stupid thing to do,
but you don't really think
about that at the time.
You think,
"Oh, I'm not gonna sink"
It felt quite muddy at first
and it did feel like my feet
were gettin' a bit stuck,
but it just felt like
walking in thick mud.
And then it got kind of more...
liquidy.
And as I walked along,
it was all of a sudden
like a big pocket of quicksand
I stood into.
It felt like it was sucking me,
pulling me down into the sand
I tried to pull myself out,
but that made me sink
about twice as fast.
And there was people shoutin'
from the prom,
"Stop struggling
and just keep still."
I sunk up to about here-ish,
I think.
And, ahm, I remember
at first my feet didn't feel like
I had them anymore.
There was lots of sand in my wellies
and they were being dragged down.
It was liquid,
but it was going really hard
where I was puttin' pressure
onto the sand.
It was just settin'
like concrete around me.
Sara was mired deep in quicksand,
only 150 feet from the shore.
It looked just like
the rest of the beach,
but this particular patch of sand
was different.
Sara was locked so firmly in place
She couldn't get out on her own.
What we think of as solid ground
- terra firma -
isn't really solid at all.
It's billions of
separate granular particles
resting on each other.
Normally that's all it is.
But quicksand forms when rising
water levels in the ground
force the grains to lose contact,
and they float apart,
suspended in water.
The liquefied sand
can no longer support you,
so down you go.
As Sara realized too late,
struggling is a bad idea
as it only liquefies the ground
even more
so you sink further.
Trying to pull your legs up
compacts the sand tightly,
turning the water
pressure into suction,
and locking your foot in place.
The finer the particles
in the quicksand,
the tighter and
more vise-like the grip.
Word of Sara's predicament
reached the armside coast guard
who handle some 30 quicksand rescue
every year.
When I arrived on the promenade
I saw Gordon,
one of my crew,
already in there with Sarah.
She really was in a mess.
She was really frightened,
she was screaming crying,
she was just thrashing,
all she wanted to do was get out.
So I radioed, but still
we are just talking minutes.
After a while, there were
all these people around me.
It was getting really panicky.
There's lots of noise
and fire engines and police
and it seemed like
it was taking forever.
Freeing a victim from quicksand
without also getting trapped
calls for special gear.
The Arnside coast guard
uses portable planks
to cross the unstable sands
and support their weight
during the rescue.
They put a big wooden board
over my head.
It was like a big square
with a hollow in the middle.
And to pull me out,
they pulled one leg out first.
They basically dug my leg out
with their arms
they put the one leg onto the board
so I could lever my other leg out.
And then I was sort of laying
in the sand
and then they
managed to get me out altogether.
And they just picked me up...
just ran me across these boards
to the shore
and I didn't touch the floor
until I got to the ambulance.
Since it happened
I've been back once.
I came a bit onto the sands,
but I stayed mostly by the rocks
because I think I've learned
my lesson the first time...
It's not worth the hassle
of all the peoples jobs
coming out and helping you
and really
it's pointless going out there
in the first place.
In this part of England quicksand
isn't limited to the beach
where Sara was trapped.
The town of Arnside
lies near the entrance
to an enormous body of water
called Morecambe bay.
The area is well known for its
wildlife and scenic beauty.
It is also notorious
for some of the world's
most dangerous quicksand.
Sands do look nice, don't they?
And they look safe.
They always look safe
to the lay person
it looks like any old sand.
And that's its hidden danger.
For centuries,
Morecambe bay at low tide
has seduced unwary travelers,
tempting them to risk their lives
for a short cut from one village
to another by crossing the sands.
More than 150 people
are known to have perished
attempting this journey.
By itself, quicksand is not deadly
but it is the ultimate trap,
locking its victim in place
while some other force of nature
finishes the job.
In Morecambe bay,
it's a 30-foot tide.
You can never out-run it really,
because it never tires, the tide.
There is a saying in this area
that it can travel at the speed
of a galloping horse.
Well, even a horse can get tired,
but the tide never does.
To help travelers
more safely negotiate
Morecambe bay's massive tides
and infamous quicksand,
the British monarchy appointed
the first official guide
some 600 years ago.
In 1963, Cedric Robinson became
the latest in this long line
of queen's guides to the sands.
You can only know and read the sands
from bein' brought up
such as I was,
from a very early age.
There's no way you can read a book
and say, "Well, I know the route."
It doesn't work like that.
You have to know
the sands intimately
and if it can catch you out
out there,
it will do.
Cedric has lived and worked
as a fisherman on Morecambe bay
for over 50 years
and he knows its perils
better than most.
His introduction to quicksand
began at the age of fourteen.
I didn't want to do anything,
only follow the sands for a livin',
same as me father
and me grandfather,
and even me grandmother.
She was a fisherwoman.
Here on Morecambe bay,
fishing has always been
a hazardous profession.
At low tide, the bay is transformed
into a wet desert -
the fish more than seven miles
off shore.
In the old days,
locals harvested the sea
from horse and cart,
venturing out on the treacherous
sands to set their nets
and wait for the catch
to roll in with the tide.
Not everyone made it back
to safe ground.
Many foundered in quicksand,
both horse and driver drowned
by the returning tide
as it surged over their heads.
As the royal guide,
one of Cedric's responsibilities
is to educate the public
to Morecambe bay's risks by leading
"nature walks" out on the sands.
Before taking any group off shore,
he surveys the exposed flats.
Come a fine day,
before setting foot on the sands,
I can go up onto the tops, with
a marvelous view of the estuary,
and I can look through
the binoculars out there
and scan the river down
and I can say to myself
with my knowledge:
"Well, that's the place to cross."
The danger spots
are the lowest areas,
where the meandering paths of rivers
and streams carve narrow channels
in the bay...
quicksand is formed by the action
of the tides
as it raises the water table
beneath the bay,
saturating and loosening the sand
in and along these channels.
It looks just the same as any sand.
It looks firm until you stand on it
and it just goes like jelly.
And the more people
that goes over that area,
the more jellyish it gets.
There are some areas out there
where it would be
too frightening to go near them.
But there are areas
where you can go on it
and you can have fun with children.
It may seem unwise
to mix kids and quicksand,
but Cedric's hope
is to prevent future tragedies
by teaching children
how to recognize it for themselves.
Have you ever been
on quicksands before?
No.
You could get really stuck
couldn't you?
Yeah...
Yeah that's it.
It clings, doesn't it?
It's like a suction, isn't it?
So it's bad there.
And once you go on it, it's worse.
But if you come back to there,
that area in two hours,
that water will have come out
and it'll have hardened up
a little bit.
And that's the danger.
If you were in there for two hours,
we wouldn't get you out
because the water comes out
and it sets just like concrete.
Quicksand is always
the highlight of the walk,
but Cedric makes sure the kids
understand that ultimately,
it's a serious hazard.
After a certain time
one or two of them will get that
little bit deeper and -
and then it gets past
the exciting stage
and someone can get stuck.
So Cedric has to blow the whistle,
say, "Come on out of there!
I don't want to lose any of ya'."
Remember girls,
not too deep
otherwise you'll have to stay!
Usually, you find quicksand outside,
a product of mother nature.
But with the right ingredients
and know-how, you can make your own.
Scott Steedman understands quicksand
better than most.
He is a civil engineer
who has spent his professional life
studying the earth beneath our feet.
At home in the kitchen,
Scott has his own special recipe
for quicksand.
This is corn flour which
people use for thickening gravy
and it shows just all the same
properties as quicksand.
Quite extraordinary
when you mix it with water
you can change it
from this solid form,
into a liquid and back again.
And uh, let me just show you that
because I'll just put some more in,
more than I need
and we'll see if we can't make
a quicksand here in the kitchen.
The cornflower is a hard
and fine granular material,
so its a bit like sand or fine sand
but extremely fine
and so we can see in the mixture
all the same properties that
you see in a quicksand on a beach.
But really in a small scale,
here in a glass.
So this is the corn flour paste
in its liquid form.
And if I just stir the spoon slowly
you can see that it is a liquid.
Lift it up
and it drips straight back in
just like a liquid.
But if I stab at it
with a spoon quickly
like a person trying to
run across the quicksand
they don't sink in.
It is absolutely solid -
well it's undulating,
but it's solid under the tip
of the spoon.
It's got all that strength
to hold the person up.
But if the person stands still,
it just sinks in.
And then if I grab at the spoon
and try and pull it out quickly,
like I'm kicking with my legs
in the quicksand,
it locks absolutely solid.
If I kick from side to side
I just can't get it out -
it's absolutely stuck.
In the movies,
getting stuck in quicksand
was usually a terrifying experience,
and the hapless victim went to
extraordinary lengths to escape.
But in reality
there are some people around
who just can't wait to get into it.
These days my experience with it
is filming other people.
People from all walks of life.
They bring their selves
or their significant other
and they want to jump into
a bottomless pit of quicksand
to experience it,
and I provide that.
Chuck Lang is making his own
contribution to the b-movie genre.
Be looking over your shoulder
as you're running
like you hear the posse coming.
You want me to stand back here
and fire a few shots
over your head or something?
Chuck is in high demand
for his directing skills,
and for his knack
for finding quicksand,
along the banks
of the Mississippi river.
Chuck and his friends are just
a few members of an emerging network
of quicksand fanatics.
The competition is
who can find quicksand first.
And the game is what do you do
after you've found it...
It is almost like you are chained
to the ground all over.
You have to move,
you have to exercise a lot of energy
just to move a little bit.
Imagine yourself in molasses.
It's almost like an exercise.
You are going to burn some calories.
You really are.
To an outsider, playing around
with a dangerous natural phenomenon
may seem foolish.
But after years of trial and error,
these buffs have developed
an impressive understanding
of quicksand
- its realities and a few myths...
including the ones
Hollywood made up.
Don't believe what you saw on TV.
You're not going to
sink out of sight.
Perhaps its the biggest myth of all:
that you'll step into a pool
of quicksand...
And disappear.
But that's virtually impossible.
You're actually more at risk
in a pool of plain old water.
Because humans are composed mainly
of water, we won't stop sinking
until we've displaced an amount
equal to our own volume,
and that puts us
beneath the surface.
Quicksand is twice
as dense as water,
so we won't sink nearly as far,
only about chest deep.
The quicksanders have a good time
applying their knowledge
of buoyancy,
but generally they don't tempt fate.
Here on the Mississippi
the quicksand they play in
is not the most dangerous...
The sand grains are fairly large
so the grip is less "vice-like."
But just in case
something does go wrong,
they use the buddy system.
It's not a good idea
to ever go out by yourself
to look for quicksand.
Because if you find it
and you do get stuck
you could be there a while.
Bruce Fyfe certainly wasn't out
looking for quicksand
when he stumbled into it one night
in 1999 while chasing his dog.
But find it he did,
in a very unlikely place.
Basically, it's dusk,
fourth of July weekend, Friday
and I'm bookin' down
nine mile comin' back with the dog
and got approximately a little past
where the gravel pit is,
and she bolts out
the back of the truck
and I stopped the truck, took off
through the sandpiles after her.
And she goes down the hill
and got out where
they dump all their sand trappings
and stuff after they clean the rocks
and gravel off
and it's real soft there in spots
and I happened to find a soft spot.
Ended up goin' in
and basically a couple hours later
realized I was not gettin' out
without any help.
Bruce found himself knee
deep in a peculiar kind of quicksand
an unexpected by-product
of the gravel industry.
Water and fine sand particles
from the mounds of crushed rock
make this quicksand especially
"concrete-like"
and difficult to escape.
Bruce was locked in
and looking at an extended stay.
As my feet went into it
and got locked
you could actually feel it
encasing my feet and part of my leg.
From probably mid point
from my shins
down to the bottoms of my feet
I couldn't feel anything.
You know it was just...
they were dead.
And I wasn't going forward,
backwards, up or down,
and I was stuck.
I think
I resigned myself to the fact
that I was probably going to
be there overnight,
'cause I... you know,
very little traffic,
everybody's gone...
I could hear the expressway traffic,
but that's a couple miles away
and just well,
I'll wait 'til morning
and just start all over again.
And, it just got progressively
hotter through the weekend
and by the third day
I did drink the water
that was around me.
I was just to that point
where I knew something was happening
to me physically,
because
I couldn't focus on anything.
Bruce was suffering from
more than just dehydration
and prolonged exposure.
At this point,
he'd been trapped for three days
and four nights...
more than 60 hours,
and was dealing with
a frightening effect of quicksand:
a crushing pressure on his limbs.
Moving his legs back and forth
had compacted the quicksand.
The pressure had increased
until it actually cut off
the blood supply to his legs.
Eventually, Bruce lost all feeling
in his lower extremities
as the cells,
nerves and tissues were starved of
essential oxygen and nutrients
supplied by blood flow.
When the quicksand stuff
the material
it was just like
if you were squeezing
on your legs hard as this
but it went from his mid-thighs
all the way down his leg,
just a total squeeze down to
around his foot
and kind of just squished it
right up...
I guess you could
make the comparison
to being in a vise-like situation...
Believe me coming on
to the third morning
I wanted out.
I wanted to go home.
Bruce's endurance test
finally came to an end
when the sun rose
on Tuesday morning.
I heard the machinery start
and I started screaming,
and some guy popped up over the bank
and he says,
"How long have you been here?"
And I told him and I said
roll the rescue squad
and get me some water.
They tried digging
with some shovels.
They really couldn't
because we were worried about
some injuries to his legs.
They dug with some screwdrivers
a couple of inches at a time
running their
hands down his legs to make sure
they were not poking into them.
Because he couldn't feel his legs,
from the knees
down to around his feet.
He had no feeling in there
from being compacted for so long.
As soon as my feet came free
they just pirouetted me up
and got me down on the backboard
and got me out of there...
I was tired, I was hot,
and I was just trying to
stay with it.
I didn't realize
I had developed an infection,
my kidneys had started to shut down,
and there was a lot of weird things
wrong inside of me
that I really couldn't tell.
The big thing I knew was
that my feet were messed up.
Bruce's kidneys were treated
and soon back to normal,
but his feet were another matter.
When tissues are starved of blood
and oxygen long enough,
they die,
which can lead to gangrene.
In the worst cases
toes or even legs are amputated.
Sometimes if I move my foot
just right I get a real bad twinge
and that could still be just
scar tissue breaking apart.
The Doctor said it could be a year
before your feet get back to normal.
Time could have been
Bruce's real enemy
but luckily,
his rescuers reached him
before permanent injury set in.
In a swamp north of Toronto,
it was the combination of quicksand
and cold Canadian weather
that spelled disaster
for nine year old Ethan Beattie.
The nightmare began
one chilly spring afternoon
when Ethan and his friend Steven
took a wrong turn
while playing in the backwoods
near their homes.
I got stuck at one point
and Steven thought that
me and Elmo were behind him,
so he went on.
And then we were separated.
We were looking for this path
that would take us back
but we ended up in the swamp.
As they searched for a way home,
the ground beneath their feet
began to give way.
Well, it looked like it was solid,
but when you stepped,
you would start to sink,
and it looks like it's shallow
but when you step in your leg...
it will get deeper.
Steven managed to find his way home
and told his mother
that Ethan and Elmo
were still lost in the swamp.
As darkness fell,
police and local rescue squads
organized an extensive search.
You could see the lights of the
fire trucks and the police cars.
There was lots of commotion
and you could see people massing
down at the corner here,
waiting to go in on foot
to do a search.
The rescuers had their work
cut out for them.
Ethan had disappeared in the heart
of a three square mile swamp
and it was already dusk
when the search began.
We'd also been informed
by the police officers
that had gone out ahead of time
that there was quicksand.
So there's a danger out there
that we were actually told not to
actually leave the boat
unless we had a visual contact
with the boy.
You hope for the best,
but you expect the worst,
you don't want to go up there
all pumped thinking
you're going to find somebody alive,
because if you don't,
especially a child.
If you don't find them alive
that's devastating.
For several hours
the rescue team scoured the swamp
but there were no signs
of Ethan or the dog
I can't imagine
what a little nine year-old boy
is thinking,
when it starts to get dark,
he can see the helicopter,
he can hear
the people looking for him.
Ahm, he can't answer because
it's starting to get too cold.
He's gotten too far.
He can't get back.
He's getting stuck.
The only thing he's got with him
is his dog.
As the night wore on,
Ethan's situation
grew more desperate.
Stuck in quicksand,
his body trapped
in near-freezing swamp water,
he was in real danger
of dying from exposure.
Elmo the dog sensed Ethan
was in trouble,
and stayed close to the boy.
When I got too cold.
Elmo would lie on me
and when I was falling asleep,
Elmo would lick my face
so I would stay awake.
Every 15-20 seconds
we would call out his name,
hoping that we'd get a response.
More than five hours
after the search began,
the beam of Dave Pierce's spotlight
reflected off the eyes of an animal
crouched in the reeds.
We got probably within about 50 feet
and I was able to see
a slightly black shape
and then we knew it was a dog.
When we came upon the boy
and Dale shouted out
"He's alive!" boy, that was it.
The adrenaline's pumpin'
and we're basically running
across there to get to him.
And to find him still alive;
still alert...
OK, now we've got a chance.
By now, Ethan was ice cold
and extremely weak,
sunk deep in the quicksand.
I was up to here in mud
and it was, they would -
I think they were pullin' me a lot
to get me out.
But the soft wet ground
nearly thwarted the rescuers'
efforts to free Ethan
and get him into the boat.
Dale picked him up.
He turned around,
he took one step and boom
he went down to his chest
in quicksand.
It scared the hell out of us.
We knew it was there,
but we didn't step in it before
The men formed an assembly line,
handing Ethan off to each other
as they wrestled with the quicksand.
They struggled for solid footing
and slowly maneuvered
back to their craft.
It was close to eleven o'clock
when the rescue team
finally carried Ethan to shore.
After seven hours in the cold swamp
he was in a state of severe shock,
and deeply hypothermic.
His body temperature had fallen to
within just a few degrees
of cardiac failure.
Had Ethan been in the quicksand
much longer,
he may not have survived.
Wandering into swamps
and getting stuck in quicksand
is one thing.
But Lil Judd certainly
never expected
to find it in her part of the world.
You've heard about quicksand.
You hear about it, but...
but I'd be able to locate it
basically in my back yard,
no. No, that, I didn't expect.
Though Hollywood has produced some
pretty good fakes over the years,
California seems an unlikely
candidate for real quicksand.
Of the two main ingredients,
there's more than enough sand,
but this dry state
can be short on water.
But in 1998
heavy rains had turned a normally
dry gully just east of Hollywood
into a quicksand trap.
We rode out on the sandbank
and we were standing out there
for maybe five minutes.
And he decided to take
a step forward and it had a drop.
Suddenly all of him was in
and I looked around and realized
he had actually literally sunk,
because as I'm trying to tell him
"Get up,"
he's trying to get up,
but he can't.
For a moment there,
I just went panicky
and I sat down next to him
and started crying.
The thing with horses
and animals in general
when they're in a panic situation
like this,
they will either give up
or very possibly they'll go insane.
So all I could do
was hope he understood
from my tone of voice.
I gotta go.
I gotta leave you.
I can't get you out on my own.
I have to get help.
I'll be back. Don't move.
Lay as still as you can."
Now Lil had to
avoid getting herself trapped
in the same quicksand
that held her horse.
I ran across this area
and kept sinking down to my hip.
I just grabbed at whatever I could
and pushed against whatever I could
and just never allowed myself
to remain too long
in the same place.
Help was not long in coming,
but once the rescue efforts
had begun,
destined's situation
quickly went from bad to worse.
He ends up in the stream.
And all I could think was
"oh my god,
With all these people here,
he's gonna drown.
I am going to watch him drown.
With a lot of encouragement,
destined was able to thrash his way
out of the water,
but the weight of
his 1600 pound body,
concentrated on four narrow hooves,
made it impossible for the horse
to get out of the quicksand.
As a last resort,
a helicopter was brought in
to airlift him to solid ground.
Somehow they managed
to get this harness on him
and they started lifting him.
He is flying up in the air.
And he's slipping out
of the harness.
And I'm saying, "Put him down.
Put him down."
But the first place destined landed
wasn't solid enough
to support his weight.
He continued to flounder
in the quicksand
until his rescuers adjusted
his harness
and tried a second airlift.
No one ever said,
"You know,
we can't save this horse."
No one ever said that to me.
And I'm sure a lot of people
were thinking it
when they saw what he looked like
and where he was.
This time,
the helicopter pilots gently
lowered destined onto firm ground.
Despite four hours in quicksand
and two precarious airlifts,
the horse was unharmed.
He was up and walking again
in just minutes.
I am one very,
very lucky horse owner!
And he's one very, very lucky horse.
Lil and destined were fortunate.
There were enough people, expertise
and technology to save the day.
But that hasn't
always been the case.
In the 19th century,
there were few resources available
to American cowboys.
While driving their herds of cattle,
they encountered quicksand
on a regular basis as they tried to
ford sand-laden rivers.
Hauling a two-ton steer
out of quicksand was no easy matter.
The best they could do was
try and pull the animals free
with ropes.
But unfortunately, things didn't
always go like clockwork.
As one weary cowboy put it,
"this last method
saved many bogged down cattle,
but it tore the heads, horns or
legs off quite a few others."
The cattle of the old west were lost
in small patches of quicksand.
But sometimes quicksand
can spread for miles...
and swallow a city.
Perhaps the most remarkable
case occurred in 1692.
The city of Port Royal, Jamaica -
at the time,
one of the wealthiest cities
in the new world -
was resting quietly
on its foundation -
a sandy spit of land
Just before noon on June 7th,
a huge earthquake shook the ground
with tremendous force.
The violent motion pushed seawater
up through the loose sand.
In a process called liquefaction,
the entire peninsula beneath
Port Royal
turned to quicksand.
When the shaking finally stopped
after ten minutes,
a third of the city had slid
into the sea,
and 2000 people were dead.
The water had drained back
out of the ground,
locking people into graves
of hardened quicksand.
Written accounts from survivors
describe some
of the most horrifying moments.
"No place suffered like Port Royal
where whole streets
were swallowed up
by the opening earth and houses
and inhabitants
went down together...
Some were swallowed up to the Neck,
and then the Earth shut upon them,
and squeezed them to death...
some were left buried with their
heads above ground.
"The shake opened the earth;
the seawaters flew way up
and carried the people in alive.
I lost my husband, my son
and all I ever had in the world"
Port royal went down
more than 300 years ago,
but despite the hazard,
we still build cities on low-lying,
sandy areas near rivers or the sea.
The phenomenon of liquefaction
is of vital concern to engineers
who must factor in the risk
of quicksand conditions
whenever they plan new construction
in earthquake zones.
At the university of Bristol
in England,
Scott Steedman uses models
to demonstrate
how buildings will react
when the ground beneath
turns to quicksand,
as it did in port royal.
We're building a beach here
to demonstrate some
of the properties of quicksand.
It's a special sort of quicksand,
because it's a quicksand
that's formed in an earthquake.
The shaking in an earthquake
creates extra water pressure
in the ground
and that boils up to the surface
and produces all the same phenomena
as quicksand.
This is the ocean down here,
and stretching up the slope here
is the beach
and behind the beach
here is the flat ground,
behind where you may have a town
or people...
This is quite a high building
next to a rather steep slope.
On a shaking table,
Scott subjects his model high rise
to simulated earthquakes of seven
or eight on the Richter scale -
magnitudes easily strong enough
to liquefy the earth,
and turn it to quicksand.
You can see how the building
has sunk in and rotated here,
mainly because the slope
has given way beneath it.
And so that's forced it to tilt
over this direction.
As the shaking progressed,
the water pressure's built up
in the sand underneath
the foundation of the bottom block,
and as that happened
the ground got softer.
And with the shaking
and the frequency of the earthquake,
it started to get more
and more dramatic and in the end,
of course, with the lean becoming
more and more pronounced,
eventually the top blocks just
rolled off and fell down the hill.
Just east of anchorage,
Alaska is Turnagain arm,
a 50 mile long fjord
filled with quicksand.
Over the eons, the slow movement
of glaciers has ground hard rock
from the mountains around the arm
into an extremely fine powder.
Meltwater carries that
powder downstream
and into the waters
of Turnagain arm.
When the tide retreats,
a vast expanse of glacial silt
is exposed.
In Alaska,
they call this the mud flats.
But when these tiny particles
mix with subsurface water
from the incoming tide,
this powdered rock has all
the properties of deadly quicksand.
More than a million people
visit Alaska every year.
Many of them come to enjoy
the waters of Turnagain arm.
Most have no idea
they are in serious danger
of getting stuck.
The Lukens family has lived beside
Turnagain arm for thirty years,
but despite knowing
about the quicksand,
they've turned the fjord
at low tide into a playground.
We've never had any trouble
getting out of the mud.
Of course, you know,
we don't sit there
and see how deeply we can
get ourselves imbedded either.
We try and get out right away
and move...
As long as you keep moving
you really don't get stuck.
So far the Lukens have been lucky.
But that's not always the case.
Most people are tourists,
and they go out there
and they think it is
a relatively safe area
They play around with it
They know the stuck
of this kind of lake below
and they stay with it
and then they play with it.
and then they get one ankle stuck
and they try to pull that out.
They get the second ankle stuck
and pretty soon they're
they're in up over their knees.
As usual,
quicksand is just the trap.
In Turnagain arm,
the real killers are the cold water,
and the enormous tide,
the second highest in the world.
It is swift and extreme,
rising forty feet
in less than six hours.
Rescuing people from quicksand
is tough enough.
Trying to beat a racing tide
ups the stakes dramatically.
Four times a year,
the Girdwood fire department
runs a thorough simulation
to check their gear,
and make sure every member
of the team is ready
for a real life quicksand rescue.
Dan sill is
the operations commander.
When we show up on scene
we are going to go out,
we are going to
evaluate the situation,
evaluate the mud and the currents
and the tides and the winds
and everything else.
We'll make a game plan.
We'll either set up a person
here or here.
Everything we do out there,
we've trained for it numerous times.
Everybody knows what the game plan
is, including the victim.
We'll take Bob out there
and put him the mud no more
than his knees.
There are plenty of suitable areas
in Turnagain arm to stage a drill.
Some of the worst quicksand
is just off the highway.
This salty peninsula
thirty-five miles east of Anchorage
is perfect for testing
the Girdwood team's rescue skills.
It has all the hazards they face
on real calls,
including the debilitating element
of cold.
This mud is the same temperature
water is -
about 45 degrees,
which is really, really cold.
And if you're out here
without the proper
protective equipment on,
you're gonna get hypothermic
when you struggle to get out of it.
You're gonna get cold.
You're gonna get exhausted,
and you're going to take and go down
and die real quick.
Having the right clothes
can make the difference
between a successful rescue
and a fatality.
Full dry suits, life jackets,
and helmets protect the men
and increase the amount of time
they can spend working to
free a victim from cold quicksand.
Mike Tumey has been with the
department for more than a decade.
He knows all too well the pressure
of trying to rescue someone trapped
and in desperate circumstances.
In 1988,
he witnessed one of
the saddest quicksand tragedies
in recent Alaskan history.
Mr. and Mrs. Dickison were newlyweds
and, ah,
they had a little more gumption
than most of us and had chose to
spend their honeymoon, ah,
gold mining up in Seattle Creek,
which is just around
the corner here.
To get there in their four-wheeler,
they had to travel
across the mud flats.
Jay and Adeana Dickison headed out
early in the morning
to catch the low tide...
Just three hundred yards off shore,
their four wheeler bogged down
in the silt.
Adeana jumped off
to push from behind.
But struggling with the atv
liquefied the ground
beneath her feet
and she sank up to her knees.
When she stopped moving
the quicksand closed
around her legs with an iron grip.
Her husband labored frantically,
but after three hours
he had only managed to free
one of Adeana's legs.
By the time jay ran for help,
the tide was pouring into
Turnagain arm.
About nine o'clock in the morning
we got a call for
a, ah, possible victim
stuck in the mud.
We responded from the station.
It's about a half-hour response time
to this location,
hiked on the trail
with all of our equipment
As I reached the shoreline,
I heard the screams of a young woman
crying for help
"Please don't let me drown.
Please save me."
There was a, ah, woman
trapped in the rising waters
with the water just below her chin.
I went below the surface to try
and feel
what was taking place there,
I felt her leg and it seemed to
disappear in the sand
and I thought, "She's buried
all the way up to her knees,"
you know, probably straight down.
And at that point
I tried to tug on her leg,
But when I came up,
I saw her gasping for breath.
So every time I tugged her,
I pulled her under.
Each time it's violent.
I'm pulling with
even more strength now,
but each time it's jerking her
under the water
and thrashing her
at the same time.
I go under again to try
and free her leg
and when I come back up
she's under the water now.
The tide's gone over her hand
and everything was in a...
small circle.
All I could see was this little area
here in front of me,
but I'm looking down into her face
and she's under the water
holding her breath.
And I'm thinking, you know,
"What a desperate situation this is.
What a... you know,
this brave woman she,
despite all the odds,
she's gonna...
she's gonna stick with us.
She's gonna fight with us
all the way to the end."
Anyway, I didn't know what to do.
She's underwater now
and she's holding her breath
and, I can't thrash her now
because she's got one breath left.
At that point, ah, her husband
took a...
a tube off their suction dredge
and they stuck it in her mouth.
And, I...
I stroked her forehead and said,
"Just keep breathing,"
and I went down again to try
and free her leg
and I just pulled as hard
as I possibly could
and I just sat there.
"We've got to get her out,"
you know,
pulling as hard as I possibly can
and, ah, I couldn't free her.
While mike struggled
beneath the surface,
the tide continued to rise.
When he finally came up for air,
Adeana Dickison had drowned.
It wasn't until low tide
later that afternoon
the, ah, rescuers that went back
to recover her, ah,
found her, ah,
still where we'd left her,
ah, still trapped just from the knee
down by one leg in the mud
and at an angle like this.
The tide had come in swept over her,
gone back out with all that force
and that leg was still trapped,
snared in that mud.
They had to dig her out
with shovels.
The tragedy devastated
the Girdwood team.
On that fateful day,
they were beaten by the rising tide
and a lack of time.
For more than eleven years
they've continued searching for ways
to perfect their techniques
and speed up their operation.
I literally spent months and months
dreaming and fantasizing
about a tool
that I could build that
I could expedite the rescue.
And literally in minutes.
What Dan sill came up with turned
the Girdwood team's greatest enemy
into their most important ally.
Water became the key component
in their fight against the clock.
For everything to work,
the floating pump
which capitalizes on the water
around them must be kept running.
I just want you guys to make certain
if something does happen
and does go wrong
that we are relyin' on you.
So no matter what it takes,
that pump is your responsibility.
You can not let it shut off.
I don't want to freak you out
or anything,
but once Bob's in the mud
he's our responsibility.
So we're not gonna let him die.
OK, I'm up to my knees
Feel like you're sinking anymore?
A little.
I'm ready.
You ready?
Ready.
Go ahead, fire it up!
The float-a-pump sucks water up
through the hose
and into
a long perforated metal tube.
High pressure blasts of water
liquefy the dense quicksand
and unlock the grip on Bob's legs.
With the new device, the extrication
takes less than a minute.
After each run-through,
the team gathers for a debriefing.
I could not move my legs
I could feel it.
It felt like cement was around them.
And the more I tried -
before Scott was there,
I was just playing around -
but the more I tried the further
I was sinking.
The thing is,
what typically these people do,
and I was watchin' you do that,
is, ah, they'll get one foot stuck,
so they'll try to pull this one out.
This one goes deeper.
Then they realize that and they go,
"I'll stand on this foot,"
and they'll try to pull that out.
Then that one goes deeper.
So they're caught
in a see-saw motion
where they're goin' back and forth
and they're actually forcin'
themselves to get deeper.
So once both feet are in
what are you going to do
if you can't
get either one of them out?
Concentrate on one foot.
Wiggle one foot to get one foot out.
That foot gets on the highest piece
of ground that you can find.
Then you work on that one.
And vibration is what'll get it out.
What if both are in
and you aren't getting them
to move at all?
You need to fall forward
on your belly,
get all your weight off... off...
Sometimes it's not possible
because you're up to your knees.
What you have to do is
get the weight off of one point
and work to get one...
one leg out or one foot out,
roll 'til you can get
the other one out,
do a roll and run for high ground.
The bottom line is...
is you shouldn't be out there.
It's - there's nothing...
nothing for you out there.
It is just nothing but danger,
and I've said it again
and I've said it before.
It's you're flirting with the devil.
You're literally flirting
with the devil.
Sadly, Dan and his colleagues,
along with rescuers
around the world,
fight that devil all too often.
Quicksand by itself
is not the killer,
but locked in its relentless grip,
any one of it's accomplices:
time, tide, cold or heat
can finish us off.
Again and again, we seem to ignore
the warning signs
and fall prey to one
of the world's most insidious traps.
Quicksand can be found
almost anywhere.
So the safest bet
is to watch your step.