Boy saved by snorkel after being buried alive

AUSTRALIA: An 11-year-old boy was given a snorkel to breathe through after the hole he was digging on an Adelaide beach collapsed on top of him.

Jordan Spraggs had been digging the hole at Horseshoe Bay on Thursday when it collapsed, covering him with more than a metre of sand, the Nine Network reported.

‘‘I was shouting out for help, and no-one could barely hear me,’’ he said.

‘‘[The sand] was up to probably about an inch above my head.

‘‘My mum heard about it and she came running down, and she shovelled all the sand away from my face, and she got it all out of my mouth so that I could breathe,’’ Jordan said.

One of the rescuers, Darien Bauer, said the boy’s mother was ‘‘quite hysterical’’.

‘‘I just said to her, ‘We need to find something for him to breathe with’.’’

He ran up to a nearby caravan park, where he found off-duty police officer Lenny Carlier, who luckily had a snorkel in the back of his car.

The police officer said he grabbed the snorkel, then raced down to the beach and led the rescue effort.

‘‘When we rocked up, he was fairly well buried in,’’ the policeman said.

Jordan said he was grateful for the help of the police officer and other rescuers.

‘‘If he wasn’t there, I probably wouldn’t have survived,’’ Jordan said.

‘‘I was panicking quite a bit until the policeman came and got me a hose.’’

Jordan was freed after about 30 minutes, and taken to South Coast Hospital at Victor Harbour.

Yesterday morning, he told Nine Network he probably wouldn’t dig a hole that deep again – maybe just up to his knees.