PHIPPSBURG, Maine – A Maine woman, enjoying a walk on a popular beach, learned that quicksand doesn’t just happen in Hollywood movies, jungles or rainforests.
Jamie Acord was walking along the water’s edge at Popham Beach State Park over the weekend when he sank up to his hips in a split second, letting out a scream of shock. She told her husband, “I can’t leave!”
“I couldn’t feel the bottom,” she said. “I couldn’t find the balance.”
Within seconds, her husband pulled her out of the sand trap, the sand filled in and the stunned couple wondered what happened.
It turns out that quicksand, known as supersaturated sand, is a real thing all over the world, even in Maine, far from the jungle locations where Hollywood has used it to add drama when attracting actors.
Fortunately, real life is not like the movies.
People who get stuck in supersaturated sand remain buoyant — people don’t sink in quicksand — allowing them to float and wriggle 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 supersaturated sand is you’re not going to sink,” he said.
In this case, climate change played a role in the incident at the state’s busiest state park beach, which attracts more than 225,000 visitors a year, Britt said. A series of winter storms rerouted a river that flows into the ocean, softening the sand in the area where swimmers are most likely to walk, necessitating the posting of warning signs by park staff, he said.
Acord took to social media to warn others following her episode on Saturday, when she and her husband Patrick were strolling on the beach. Acord was collecting trash, so her hands were full when she sank.
It all happened so fast that she didn’t have time to be scared, but she worries that it would be scary for someone who is alone, especially a child who might be traumatized. “A child would be scared,” she said.
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