A man 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 say 20-year-old Zachary Porter, of Lake Bluff, Illinois, was submerged Sunday evening as the tide came in. His body was recovered Monday. The accident was the latest tragedy at Turnagain Arm, a 48-mile-long glacier-carved estuary that travels southeast from Anchorage. The estuary’s dangerous mud flats have claimed at least three other lives over the years, and many more have been rescued.
“I have been in contact with all my members, and they’re all heartbroken,” Peterson said. “This is a hard situation.”
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. 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.“I’ve really got to warn people against playing the mud,” Peterson said. “It’s dangerous.”
There have been other deaths on the mud flats. In 1988, newlyweds Adeana and Jay Dickison were gold dredging on the eastern end of the arm when her ATV got stuck in the mud, the Anchorage Daily News reported. She then became stuck when trying to push it out and drowned with the incoming tide.
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