A woman was swallowed by quicksand while enjoying a walk with her husband on a popular beach on the coast of Maine.
Jamie Acord was walking along the water’s edge at Popham Beach State Park in Phippsburg, located in the Portland metropolitan area, earlier this month when she suddenly “fell like a rock.”
He sank up to his hips in a split second and let out a gasp as the high tide began to rise.
Acord told her husband Patrick: ‘I can’t go out!’
But within seconds, Patrick came to her rescue and pulled her out of the sand trap. The pair then watched as the hole filled with sand and disappeared.
Jamie Acord was walking along the water’s edge at Popham Beach State Park in Phippsburg with her husband Patrick earlier this month when she got caught in quicksand and suddenly “fell like a rock.” The couple appears together on the beach.
This photo provided by Patrick Acord shows his wife, Jamie Acord, at Popham Beach in Phippsburg, Maine, where she sank hip-deep in quicksand, Saturday, June 1, 2024.
Acord took to social media to warn others after her episode on June 1, when she and Patrick were walking on the beach.
He had been picking up trash, so his hands were full when he sank into waist-deep sand in a matter of seconds.
“I just dropped like a rock,” Acord said. WCSH-TV. “Patrick said I was there and the next minute I was gone.”
She shared that she “couldn’t feel the bottom” or “find my balance” as the sand continued to pull her down.
‘I couldn’t feel the ground with my feet. I couldn’t push myself,” she recalled.
Patrick managed to get her to safety. Acord, except for a few scratches, was not injured in the incident.
She then changed her clothes, which she described as covered in “wet, cement-like sand” and decided to share her experience online as a warning to others.
‘State park rangers stated that they have received some reports that the sand is like quick sand. I fell up to my hips, that is 2.5 feet,’ he warned in his Facebook post.
‘Patrick Acord said one moment he was there and the next he wasn’t. I had to ask him to take me out. He couldn’t do it alone. My feet are scratched as are my knees, probably from stones or sticks in the hole.
“As soon as Patrick pulled me out, the hole disappeared.”
Acord said the situation happened so quickly that she didn’t have time to be scared, but she worries it would be scary for someone who was alone, especially a child who might be traumatized.
‘If he had been a little boy, he would have disappeared into the hole. “I’m not kidding, they would have been sucked in,” she said, adding that “a child would be scared.”
She said People Magazine that she and her family “go to that beach all the time,” but had never experienced quicksand before.
“It was one of those moments where I didn’t know what to do,” he said. “This is something new that has never happened before.”
Acord decided to share his experience on Facebook to serve as a warning to other bathers.
Climate change played a role in the episode at Popham Beach State Park, Maine’s busiest state park beach, officials with the state Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry said. Pictured is a file photo of beachgoers enjoying the low tide at Popham Beach State Park.
Quicksand, known as supersaturated sand, can be found around the world, agriculture officials said.
People who get stuck in supersaturated sand remain buoyant (people don’t sink in quicksand), allowing them to float and squirm to safety, said Jim Britt, spokesman for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.
‘People hear the word quicksand and think of a jungle movie. The reality with this oversaturated sand is that you’re not going to sink,” he said.
In the case of Acord, climate change played a role in the episode at the state’s busiest state park beach, which attracts more than 225,000 visitors each year, Britt said.
A series of winter storms diverted a river that flows into the ocean, softening the sand in the area where beachgoers are most likely to walk, requiring the posting of warning signs by park staff, he said.