Boondah Reserve, Warriewood: Horror after teenager swallowed by sinkhole while playing with friends in family park
A teenager is lucky to be alive after he gets stuck in a sinkhole at a family park.
Oska Stockner, 13, was swallowed by the sinkhole at the Boondah Reserve on Boondah Road in Warriewood, on Sydney’s northern beaches, at 2.45pm on Saturday.
He was playing with friends moments earlier when he noticed something strange on the field near the goalposts and went over to investigate.
The ground suddenly collapsed from under the teen, trapping him in the sinkhole.
His concerned friends immediately alerted the emergency services.
A teenager is lucky to be alive after getting stuck in a sinkhole (pictured) at a family park
Officers initially could not see the boy because he was stuck in the two-meter deep sinkhole and only his fingertips were visible.
In a battle against time, officers quickly pulled the boy out of the ground before the sinkhole collapsed and possibly suffocated him.
NSW Ambulance paramedics examined the teenager and gave him the all-clear, much to the relief of his concerned parents who arrived at the scene.
Oska’s mother Bri Vine praised her son’s friends for their quick thinking.
“I think he probably would have been more scared if no one was around,” she told the newspaper Sydney Morning Herald.
“But he had a lot of friends and there was quite a crowd by the time I got there.”
Senior Constable David Ferguson, who rushed to the scene, described the rescue as precarious.
βHe said every time he tried to push with his feet, he fell further down so he couldn’t really get anything to lift himself up,β he said.
Senior Constable 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 sinkhole at Boondah Reserve (pictured) on Boondah Road in Warriewood, on Sydney’s northern beaches, at 2.45pm on Saturday
Firefighters placed barricades around the sinkhole and as a further precaution, police established an exclusion zone.
A Northern Beaches Council emergency response team was also present.
It is believed that sinkholes have occurred in the Boondah Reserve before.
The reserve is located on a former landfill and it is believed that recent heavy rains have weakened the soil and caused the sinkhole to open.
Sinkholes appear suddenly and can be catastrophic.
They are formed when water dissolves surface rocks and can range in depth from shallow holes about a meter deep to wells of more than 50 meters.