Sand games at the beach can be dangerous, local family discovers
By Gregory Koteles
Acorn Staff Writer

A day at Zuma Beach nearly turned deadly for the Standrowiczs of Oak Park, but the waves and the riptide weren’t the culprits this time, the sand was.

Twelve-year-old Chad Standro-wicz and six of his friends were doing what many do at the beach on the Fourth of July—they were burying each other in the sand. Lying feet-to-feet with one of his friends, Chad watched as the others playfully brought towel-load after towel-load of sand and piled a large mound on their legs.

In an instant, however, Chad’s view changed as the mound of dry sand collapsed and engulfed his head.

The first clue Chad’s parents, Donna and Steve, had that anything was wrong was the screams from friends and other beachgoers.

Chad was buried alive.

In moments, lifeguards responded and with the friends they managed to dig Chad out from his sandy tomb. But the damage had already been done. In the few minutes that he was submerged, Chad had inhaled sand into his lungs and the abrasive grains had lacerated his corneas.

"I heard people screaming because he was purple," said Donna Standrowicz. "It seemed like forever from there."

Lifeguards administered CPR and an L.A. County operations helicopter was called to the scene to rush Chad to UCLA Medical Center.

En route to the hospital, Chad’s heart stopped beating. Firefighter/paramedic Dan Fournier managed to resuscitate the boy, but Chad would suffer two more incidents of cardio-pulmonary arrest that day.

Under the supervision of teams of doctors, Chad would have more than half a cup of sand aspirated from his partially collapsed lungs and spend the next three days hooked up to oxygen tubes and IVs in the Intensive Care Unit of UCLA.

Fortunately, luck was with Chad.

"They can’t believe he’s alive and fine," said Donna. "There’s no brain damage … they don’t know how he’s fine, but he’s fine. It’s a miracle."

Chad recovered fully, with his lungs and vision intact.

A research letter that appeared in the April 2001 Journal of the American Medical Association studied the risks associated with dry-sand beach holes. The study, conducted by Bradley A. Maron, a former lifeguard and second-year medical student at Brown University, and Barry J. Maron, MD, of the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation, tracked seven cases of fatal or near-fatal injury caused by dry-sand collapse between 1997 and 2000 in the United States.

The results of the study showed the catastrophic danger that sand poses to the unwary.

Four of the seven died after being submerged in sand for 15 minutes to an hour. According to the report, "the other three individuals survived (including one who experienced hypothermia and shock) after prompt, extraordinary efforts by lifeguards or other bystanders."

Though no organization officially tracks dry-sand incidents, by studying national media reports from the last five years, Maron found a death rate of 61 percent for people trapped in sand.

"You think that they’re safe when they’re out of the water," said Donna Standrowicz. "I’m still having nightmares because I still see what he looked like on the beach."

The Standrowiczs don’t intend to live in fear of the beach, but Chad’s brush with death has opened their eyes to the dangers away from the water––and in the sand.