Imagine you're walking along, enjoying a nice afternoon stroll when the ground suddenly gives way. No, it's not a sinkhole, but that doesn't mean you're out of danger. You're in quicksand. A West Virginia hiker found himself in a sticky situation after being consumed by "quicksand" mud up to his waist.
Unable to get himself out, the hiker needed a rescue. The Summersville Fire Department revealed they responded to a call about a man getting stuck in quite a bit of mud.
"Initially SFD units attempted to access the patient via the water but were unsuccessful due to the mud with the lake being low," the department said in a Facebook post.
Quicksand Situation
So what caused this quicksand situation? According to officials, they had been draining the water of Summersville Lake for the winter. It's all a part of their seasonal maintenance on the popular recreation spot. But it ended up leaving some areas with quite a bit of thick mud as a result.
"Any time they bring the lake down, where the mud is always underwater, and they bring it down, it is essentially quicksand," Lt. Uriah Ludle of the Wilderness Volunteer Fire Departments said in an interview with WCHS-TV. "You step on it, and you start moving, it just sucks you in. You're just stuck."
Unlike in the movies, quicksand can't actually consume a person entirely. You cannot drown in quicksand unless you go head-first into the mud. However, exposure to it can cause hypothermia and also a lack of circulation. Search and rescue faced the difficult task of trying to figure out how to save the hiker without getting stuck themselves.
They realized that they couldn't reach the hiker by walking to him. So what they did was place plywood and backboards across the mud to reach him. It was a very slow process to even get to him. It required 10 people and a rope system to remove him.
"I mean, if you put one foot off of it for any amount of time, you would start [sic] sink, so it was a slow, methodical process to make sure we were safe so that we could get the patient out safely," Ludle said.
Fortunately, they were able to rescue him and get him to the hospital.
