(NEW YORK) — A woman is speaking out after sinking into quicksand along the Maine coast.
Jamie Acord said she was walking with her husband near the water on a Maine beach when she suddenly sank up to her hips and found herself trapped waist deep in sand.
“We were probably 10 feet from the sand dunes and I just dropped into the ground,” Jamie Acord recalled to ABC News’ Good Morning America.
Jamie Acord’s husband Patrick Acord said he noticed her legs were suddenly out of sight.
“I was right beside her and she dropped down, like a couple feet back,” Patrick Acord said.
Patrick Acord was able to pull his wife out of the sand quickly.
“I was just covered in mud and we turned around and looked back and there was no hole,” Jamie Acord said. “And so it was one of those moments where it’s like, did that really happen?”
Jamie Acord’s quicksand encounter isn’t isolated. Others on social media have posted about how quickly a quicksand experience can unfold.
Experts say quicksand — super saturated sand or sand that has become nearly liquified with water — is common around the world.
“Anywhere you’re adjacent to a water body, there’s a chance you could potentially have it,” explained Peter Slovinsky, a marine geologist with the Maine Geological Survey. “Most of the time you would encounter quicksand is in areas of the beach that are kind of below the high tide line.”
Experts say one should stay calm if they find themselves in a quicksand situation.
“You are more buoyant than quicksand,” Slovinsky said. “You’re not going to sink down into it over your head. If you walk into it and kind of get stuck, there’s a good chance you’re going to be getting out of it.”
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