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A teenager is lucky to be alive after getting trapped in a sinkhole at a family park.
Oska Stockner, 13, was swallowed by the Boondah Reserve sinkhole on Boondah Road in Warriewood, on Sydney’s northern beaches, at 2.45pm on Saturday.
Moments earlier he had been playing with friends when he noticed something strange on the field near the goalposts and went over to investigate.
The ground suddenly collapsed beneath the teen and he was trapped in the sinkhole.
His worried friends immediately raised the alarm to the emergency services.
A teenager is lucky to be alive after becoming trapped in a sinkhole (pictured) at a family park.
Officers were unable to locate the boy at first, as he was trapped in the two-metre-deep sinkhole and only his fingertips were visible.
In a battle against time, officers quickly pulled the boy from the ground before the sinkhole collapsed, potentially suffocating him.
NSW Ambulance paramedics examined the teenager and gave him the all-clear, much to the relief of his worried parents who had arrived at the scene.
Oska’s mother, Bri Vine, praised her son’s friends for their quick thinking.
“I think I probably would have been more scared if no one was around,” he told the newspaper. Sydney Morning Herald.
“But I had a lot of friends and when I arrived there were quite a few people.”
Police officer David Ferguson, who rushed to the scene, described the rescue as precarious.
“He said every time he tried to push with his feet, he sank deeper, so he couldn’t get any support to get up,” she said.
Officer Ferguson said the situation would have been much worse if no one else was around at the time.
Oska Stockner, 13, was swallowed by the Boondah Reserve sinkhole (pictured) on Boondah Road in Warriewood, on Sydney’s northern beaches, at 2.45pm on Saturday.
Firefighters set up barricades around the sinkhole and, as an additional precaution, police established an exclusion zone.
An emergency response team from the Northern Beaches Council also attended.
It is understood sinkholes have occurred at Boondah Reserve before.
The reserve is located on a former landfill and recent heavy rain is believed to have weakened the soil and caused the sinkhole to open.
Sinkholes appear suddenly and can be catastrophic.
They form when water dissolves surface rock and their depth can vary from shallow holes about a meter deep to pits more than 50 metres.