Teen Buried Alive in Sand for 30 Mins.

He survived after rescuers dug him out
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Aug 4, 2011 1:20 PM CDT

A California teen accidentally buried himself alive yesterday when a tunnel he was building at Newport Beach collapsed on him. Matt Mina, 17, was trapped under about seven feet of sand for nearly half an hour with his arms pinned behind him, trying to build pockets of air with his head, the Orange County Register reports. “I didn’t know if anyone could hear me when I was screaming for help,” he told ABC this morning (see video).

Paramedics and lifeguards got the call at 3:38 yesterday, and a huge crowd gathered as they dug. But Mina, passing in and out of consciousness, was utterly unaware of all that. “Once you're six feet under, you can't really hear anything atop,” he said. “I thought I was going to die.” So did onlookers. “Everybody was thinking, 'They're going to pull up a dead body,'” one Newport Beach resident says. (More buried alive stories.)

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