can t hear anything above the ground. for meena the nightmare began when he was on his stomach six feet below the surface digging a horizontal tunnel. i felt a little bit of sand on my leg come down. little chunks. then the whole thing just came down. tried to back out when i felt the sand on my legs but it was too late. happened so fast. meena screams and shakes his head side to side to keep sand off his face. in the process, he creates a small air pocket, allowing him to breathe. he was able to make just enough pocket to have enough air to survive. that s probably what made the big difference. that s what gave us that time to find him and rescue him. as he begins to feel the weight of the sand, meena passes out, which likely helps keep him alive while everyone on the surface searches for him. matt had been down there screaming trying to pump his
arms and trying to move his head. one, he could have lost that void space. it could have been collapsed in on him. and two, he would have been using up the precious oxygen that was still in there. meena is carted away in an ambulance and only later do rescuers learn that he escapes without injury. it s extremely remarkable that he didn t at least have some broken ribs or a broken skull or it didn t the sheer weight of it crush his chest cavity to where he couldn t even breathe period. even meena can t believe his luck. i kept asking them in the hospital is there sand in my lungs? no sand. everything checked out. perfectly healthy. my oxygen levels were normal. from now on, he ll follow the lifeguard s advice, no digging holes deeper than the height of your knee. a few days after being pulled from the sand, meena gets to meet some of the people who saved his life. this is brian and mike.
once you are under more to four to six minutes, brain death starts to occur. by ten minutes your chance of survival is very limited. my expectations is this is a body recovery at that point. just horrifying to think of that. but lifeguards, firefighters, police, and the volunteers continue to work feverishly. i tried to pull a couple of them out of the hole after about 20 minutes of digging, but they just wouldn t come out. they were in there and they were going to pull him out. after close to 30 minutes of frantic digging, finally news comes from the center of the giant pit. rescuers can see the top of meena s head. that s a long time though. and unbelievably, it looks like he s alive. he was taking slow, deep, gasping breaths, and his ears were blue, which indicated to us that we were literally, literally within a minute or two of perhaps losing brain cells
i was really thankful just for everybody that helped. the lifeguards and everything. mike helfide and jeff boyles are just relieved this rescue had such a happy outcome and that they reached meena in the nick of time. we re in california, but it s beyond the hollywood ending. when the dust settles and we still go to bed at night and hit the pillow, we re still human. and if you rescue somebody, that day was a lot better than if you were unable to rescue somebody. coming up, trapped under a collapsed stage and struggling to survive. and later, when a man refuses to leave his sinking boat, he and the rescuer risk getting pulled under, when caught on camera: nick of time continues. $21. could something that small make an impact on something as big as your retirement? i don t think so. well if you start putting that towards
on the sand. but on the afternoon of august 3rd, 2011, a nightmare is unfolding below this idyllic beach. 17-year-old matt meena is trapped underneath six feet of sand when the hole he s digging collapses in on him. alerted by meena s cousins, lifeguards, including captain mike helfide, rush to his aid. when i first came on scene, we had two lifeguards digging and then four or five, matt s cousins and friends that he was with. at that point we started getting more volunteers. helfide organizes the group into three concentric circles surrounding the spot where meena was last seen. the first rescuers are inside moving sand, trying to locate the patient. the second ring takes the sand from the rescuers and move it further out.