Jersey Shore town bans digging holes on beach – NBC New York

A frightening experience with a two-year-old on the Jersey Shore has led a town to ban digging large holes on the beach.

The City of Sea Girt implemented the new rule Thursday and will apply through the summer. Under the new ordinance, holes cannot be deeper than 12 inches, cannot be left unattended and must be filled before leaving the area.

Sea Girt is not the first Jersey Shore town to adopt such a rule. Rules regulating hole size also apply in Seaside Heights and Belmar.

A girl has died and a boy was hospitalized in critical condition after they fell into a sand hole and became trapped on a beach in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. NBC6’s Jamie Guirola reports

It came after a two-year-old boy gave his parents the ultimate scare in February when sand collapsed and buried him alive while he was playing at Neptune Place Beach in the city. Police responded to a call of a missing child just before 11:30 a.m. on Feb. 10.

The boy’s father apparently managed to free the child from the sand pit within two or three minutes of him choking, officials said, while the father dug frantically. The child survived and remained conscious and alert throughout the ordeal; he was taken to a hospital as a precaution.

Police said the child and his father did not dig a hole and the ground simply collapsed beneath the child.

Chopper 4 showed aerial footage of the crime scene two days later, with the gaping hole cordoned off to prevent anyone else from entering the area, which officials feared could be unstable at the time.

Sea Girt has dumped nearly 600,000 tons of sand on its beaches since the beginning of 2024. Beaches in the city had only reopened a week before the incident.

In 2022, an 18-year-old died after the hole he dug in the sand in Toms River collapsed, suffocating him.