3 Children Die After Tunnels They Were Digging Collapse

Three California children are dead after two separate incidents in which tunnels they were digging collapsed around them.

A 14-year-old Yuba City boy died Tuesday morning at a Sacramento hospital, two days after the collapse of a tunnel he and several friends had been digging in a vacant lot near his home.

And the bodies of a 9-year-old boy and his 7-year-old sister were discovered Monday evening amid the remains of a tunnel they were digging near their Eureka-area home.

Bill Miles, operations chief for the Yuba City Fire Department, said the 14-year-old had been digging in the tunnel with a friend who went home for a few minutes. When the friend returned he found the boy buried beneath the soil and ran for help. A relative of the trapped youth returned with other neighbors and pulled him from the tunnel.

He was taken first to Rideout Memorial Hospital in Marysville and later to Sutter Memorial Hospital in Sacramento, where he died early Tuesday. Miles estimated that the boy had been buried about eight to 10 minutes.

The bodies of Sequoia Snowtree and his sister, Sierra Roe O’Loughlin, were found last night by their mother, Lara O’Loughlin, after a search by sheriff’s deputies and neighbors.

“It appeared that both victims expired due to lack of oxygen and their inability to free themselves from the damp sand,” the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.