"I usually lose about one friend a year." "Since I started dredging I've always been around people getting killed," said Joseph Holden, a dredger for 14 years. Hundreds more endured injuries, from bruises and broken bones to lost limbs and crushed fingers. The white sand beaches tourists and residents love come with a needless human toll.Īmerica's dredging companies have earned billions of dollars during the past decade, pumping enough sand from the depths of the sea onto the nation' s beaches to give every man, woman and child on Earth a 4-gallon bucketful.Īnd in that same period, at least 17 men have died rebuilding beaches. It would take too much time and too much money, they were told, to stop work and make those fixes. His co-workers had warned the company that just such an accident was bound to happen unless changes were made. His wife, Colleen, buried her husband a few days later, on their fifth wedding anniversary. ![]() He landed on his back, on the sand meant for the new beach. It snapped the metal rod hard against his face and neck, throwing him out of the hatch. Pearce ducked into a hatch called a "rock box" and began chipping away at the 250-pound boulder with a pry bar. 29, the Sarasota resident was working on Weeks Marine barge 265 near the mouth of Tampa Bay when a supervisor told him to clear a chunk of concrete from a massive pump that moves sand. He was going to quit the brutal job of a laborer at sea as soon as he could pass the test for his ship captain's license. Always moving, the dredges are like construction sites during an earthquake.īut the pay - which can reach $60,000 and up - was too tempting for a 32-year-old man with the equivalent of a high school diploma. ![]() David Pearce knew the dangers of beach rebuilding, that sand dredges are hot, slippery and loud that deckhands can die or lose limbs.
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