Signs are posted warning people of hazardous waters and mud flats. When the tide comes back in, the silt gets wet from the bottom, loosens up and can create a vacuum if a person walks on it. “It looks like it’s solid, but it’s not.”

The estuary travels southeast from the Anchorage area and parallels the Seward Highway, the only highway that goes south and delivers tourists from Anchorage to the sportsman’s paradise of the Kenai Peninsula.Īt low tide, Turnagain Arm is known for its mud flats that 'can suck you down,” Peterson said. It lies across Turnagain Arm just 22 miles - but a 90-minute drive - from Anchorage. The accident occurred near the community of Hope, a quaint community of about 80 people. “I have been in contact with all my members, and they’re all heartbroken,” Peterson said. “But you have to remember that it’s Mother Nature, and she has no mercy for humanity.”Ī snowboarder got trapped on a ski gondola overnight amid freezing temperatures in Lake Tahoe “It’s big, it’s amazing, it’s beautiful, and it’s overwhelming,” Kristy Peterson, the administrator and lead EMT for the Hope-Sunrise Volunteer Fire Department, said of Alaska. Many more have been rescued, including someone who was fishing there last month.

At least three other people have gotten stuck and drowned there over the years. At low tide, the estuary is known for its dangerous mud flats made of silt created by glacier-pulverized rocks. The accident was the latest tragedy at Turnagain Arm, a 48-mile-long (77-kilometer-long) estuary carved out long ago by glaciers that travels southeast from the Anchorage area and parallels a major highway. A member of Porter's group called 911 when they couldn't get him out, but it was too late, authorities said. Zachary Porter, 20, of Lake Bluff, Illinois, was submerged Sunday evening as the tide came in, and his body was recovered Monday morning, Alaska State Troopers spokesperson Austin McDaniel told The Associated Press. A suburban Lake Bluff man who was walking on tidal mud flats with friends in an Alaska estuary got stuck up to his waist in the quicksand-like silt and drowned as the tide came in before frantic rescuers could extract him, authorities said.

Guy stuck in quicksand for 3 hours