A woman was nearly swallowed by quicksand on a Maine beach.
Jamie Acord was walking with her husband at Popham Beach State Park in Phippsburg, Maine when she stumbled into quicksand that practically swallowed her whole.
“Literally it was kind of like I just dropped into a manhole cover,” she told PEOPLE. “We’re walking along, just talking, and all of a sudden I went into the sand.”
“I just dropped like a rock,” she told NBC affiliate NEWS CENTER Maine. “[My husband] said I was there and then the next minute I wasn’t.”
“I couldn’t feel the ground with my feet,” she added. “I couldn’t push myself out.”
As she yelled to her husband that she couldn’t get out, he thankfully was able to grab her and pull her to safety with no major injuries.
“It was kind of one of those moments where I didn’t know what to do,” she told PEOPLE. “This is a new thing that’s never happened before. And I go to that beach all the time.”
Woman Swallowed by Quicksand at Main Beach
The strangest part of the ordeal was that there was no evidence of the quicksand or manhole after Acord’s husband rescued her.
“And as soon as he pulled me out, we turned around to look to see what had occurred because we just assumed I’d fallen in an actual hole and there was nothing there,” she continued. “It looked just like the beach. It had filled itself right back in.”
She then went on to mention how much worse it could’ve been, had she or someone else been walking alone.
“If the beach is clearing out, there’s only one or two people on the beach and you fall in something like that and you don’t know what to do or you can’t get out, you’re kind of stuck,” she said.
According to the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation, and Forestry, Acord had likely experienced a pocket of supersaturated sand.
“The sand is saturated with water,” Jim Britt, department communications director, said. “It’s even more unstable and very easy to find yourself sinking into it.”
However, “What is occurring is a 100-percent survivable scenario,” he added. It’s important to remain calm if you find yourself in such a situation.