CHILD BURIED IN SAND HOPPER

Press, Volume LXXXV, Issue 25709, 22 January 1949, Page 6

CHILD BURIED IN SAND HOPPER

RESCUE AFTER 30 MINUTES

NARROW ESCAPE FROM SUFFOCATION

(P.A.) WELLINGTON. January 21 Trapped in the bottom of a sand hopper and buried in four feet of wet sand for 30 minutes, a boy aged three and a half years had an amazing escape from death on Thursday night. He is Colin James, son of Mr Albert James of Ohiro Bay road. The child was later admitted to the Wellington Hospital. where his condition to-day was reported as satisfactory. Five local residents dug frantically for half an hour to release the child while four men worked from inside the hopper. The boy’s father pushed his arm up through the narrow outlet of the bin to keep the clinging sand away from the child's face. “His legs were astride an iron bar across the outlet and he was wedged,” said Mr James to-day. describing the struggle to free the boy. “Sand kept pouring down as we attempted to get our arms up to him. The bar was thick and a hacksaw could not cut it fast enough to free him. The men on top of the sand had a terrible job on sliding sand, endeavouring to get down through to the child.”

Mr James, whose arms were skinned from the tips of his fingers to his shoulders during the rescue efforts, said that if he had not battled to allow a little air to reach his son's face the boy would have suffocated. “They told us in hospital that if we had taken another 10 minutes to get him out he would not have lived,” he added.

The boy sat still, his legs astride the heavy bar which trapped him in the opening, and waited for the men to get to him. Had the sand been dry he would have been suffocated immediately. A pair of small legs dangling through the outlet of the hopper was the first indication to a lorry driver who was loading his truck that there was anyone in the hopper. It is one of several in the quarry at Ohiro Bay. They are constructed in the form of a triangle and are wide at the top. It is thought that the child had been playing on the level surface of sand at the top of the hopper. When the hopper gate was opened to load the lorry apparently the child was sucked into the bottom of the bin almost immediately. Sand which had momentarily clung to the sides of the hopper fell in and buried him.