PHIPPSBURG, Maine — A Maine woman taking a walk on a popular beach discovered that quicksand isn’t just a feature of Hollywood movies set in jungles or rainforests.
Jamie Acord was walking along the waterfront at Popham Beach State Park this weekend when, in a split second, she sank to her hips and let out a stunned scream. She said to her husband, “I can’t get out!”
“I couldn’t feel the bottom,” she said. ‘I couldn’t find my footing.’
Within seconds, her husband had pulled her out of the sand trap, the sand had filled up, and the stunned couple were left wondering: What just happened?
It turns out that quicksand, known as supersaturated sand, exists all over the world, even in Maine, far from the jungle locations where Hollywood has used it to add drama by trapping actors.
Luckily, real life isn’t like the movies.
People trapped in supersaturated sand float — people don’t sink in quicksand — allowing them to float and get to safety, said Jim Britt, spokesman for the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry.
“People hear the word quicksand and think of jungle film. The reality with this oversaturated sand is you’re not going to go under,” he said.
In this case, climate change played a role in the episode at the state park’s busiest beach, which attracts more than 225,000 visitors annually, Britt said. A series of winter storms He has diverted a river that flows into the ocean, softening the sand in areas where beachgoers are more likely to walk, necessitating the posting of warning signs by park staff, he said.
Acord took to social media to warn others after her episode on Saturday, when she and her husband, Patrick, were walking on the beach. Acord was collecting trash, so her hands were full when she sank.
It all happened so quickly that she didn’t have time to be scared, but she worries it would be frightening for someone who was alone, especially a child who may have been traumatized. “A child would be scared,” she said.