A Northland mother frantically dug her young son free from a collapsed sand cave yesterday afternoon, then watched helplessly as rescue crews were unable to revive him.
Police said the 11-year-old boy and a 12-year-old friend from Whangarei paddled out on body-boards to a small sand-dune island in themiddle of the Mangawhai Beach estuary, 30km northeast of Wellsford, about noon.
They had been burrowing into a 20m-high dune when their chest-deep caves collapsed on top of them.
The 12-year-old boy managed to free his head from the sand, but it took an hour and a half before his faint cries for help were heard by the dead boy's mother, who was returning to the beach to check on them.
She apparently called for help, then swam 250m to the island with two other people to dig the children free.
Members of the Mangawhai fire response team were ferried to the island by a local fisherman within minutes of the alarm being raised.
Deputy chief fire officer Maurice Doughty and another firefighter spent 15 minutes trying to revive the 11-year-old.
"We kept working on him until the local surf lifesavers brought an ambulance officer across in their inflatable boat, and he spent about another 15 minutes trying to revive him, but nothing could be done," said Mr Doughty.
The dead boy is expected to be named this morning.
Constable Geoff Medland, of Wellsford, said the 12-year-old was recovering in Whangarei Hospital last night, but was suffering from shock and hypothermia.
He said that it was likely signs would be erected on the island - a popular play area visited by hundreds of youths each year - warning of the danger of making caves in the dunes.
Mr Doughty said: "I don't like the idea of a tragedy serving as a lesson, but people need to be aware that sand dunes can slip and give way if they start digging into them."
He said heavy rain had made the sand-dune surface firm, probably fooling the boys into thinking it was safe to burrow into it.
Constable Medland said the boys, whose parents were visiting relatives at the beach, had built two separate metre-deep holes, which collapsed after the dead boy started digging across the dune to join up the two caves.
