Boys’ Tunnel Vision Turns Into Trouble

SEAL BEACH — Perhaps they’ll be grounded.

A handful of boys, ages 9 to 14, unintentionally created a crisis Wednesday on the sands of Seal Beach when their summer project, an 8-foot tunnel, was discovered and triggered fears that someone might be trapped below.

Fifty firefighters, two urban search and rescue teams and a bulldozer assembled in the shadow of the Seal Beach Pier after a city worker found the gaping hole branching off into a tunnel.

As the sheepish boys watched, the emergency crews worked two hours in the morning heat to excavate the entire tunnel, just to be sure no one was inside. The boys shrugged when asked about the tunnel’s purpose.

“We were just digging,” a 12-year-old named Brice said as he watched sweating firefighters use plywood to brace the tunnel. “But there’s nobody in there.”

A cooking pot found just inside the hole had caused worry that a transient might be using the burrow as a home and could be trapped inside.

Also on the minds of fire officials was the death last week of a 21-year-old man on a North Carolina beach who dug a 9-foot hole and was sitting at the base when the walls collapsed on him.

“Digging in sand is an absolutely dangerous environment,” Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority said. “It’s very unstable, especially with children, and it can cause a tragic situation. These kids were very lucky.”

The boys, using their hands, a pail and a cooking pot, had dug down about 3 feet at the base of a concrete planter with palm trees near the intersection of 12th Street and Ocean Avenue. They then dug a tunnel headed north which, miraculously, did not give way for 8 feet.

“They must have watched the ‘Great Escape’ on video this week.” said Dennis Shell, a fire authority spokesman. “And God must have been their co-pilot when they dug.”