Put out your disposable barbecue, move it off the sand, and the ground where it stood can still take the skin off your feet.
Two people treated at the Welsh Centre for Burns at Morriston Hospital did exactly that, at Cefn Sidan and at Oxwich Bay, and stepped onto the patch of sand seconds later.
One could not walk for a fortnight. The other needed the blistered skin removed, weeks of dressing changes, and four to five months before she could walk properly again.
‘I had to be carried off the beach’
Sam Knight, 27, was at a family gathering at Cefn Sidan earlier this year. It was windy, with sand blowing about.
“When we’d finished with the barbecue I used tongs to move it to one side and extinguished it, so I thought it was safe,” he said.
“But the patch of sand it had been on was still boiling, and after I stepped on it I had to be carried off the beach.”
He went to the minor injuries unit at Neath Port Talbot Hospital, where staff patched him up and told him the burns were too deep for them to treat. He was sent to Morriston.
Melanie Holbrook was at Oxwich Bay with her husband. They had also put their barbecue out and moved it before she stepped on the sand.
“When I looked, the bottoms of my feet were burnt yellow,” she said. “The heat from the barbecue had gone straight into the sand. I had no idea that could happen.”
Her husband poured water over her feet and ran for help. Others on the beach got her feet into a container of cold water and moved her into the shade until an ambulance arrived.
“I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone,” she said. She still gets some sensitivity in her feet.
The engineer who went back and measured it
Knight is a mechanical engineer. Once he could walk again, he returned to the beach with a thermometer.
He lit two disposable barbecues, one placed straight onto the sand and one raised 40mm above it. The sand under the first reached 244 degrees. Under the raised one it stayed close to the temperature of the surrounding beach.
He also found the packaging had told him to raise the barbecue off the ground without supplying anything to do it with, suggesting instead that he find some bricks.
A unit seeing more of these every summer
Consultant surgeon Jeremy Yarrow, of the Welsh Centre for Burns and Plastic Surgery, said figures from the International Burn Injury Database showed a continuous rise in disposable barbecue injuries over the past few years.
He said sand absorbs heat from the barbecues and can reach upwards of 400°C, staying dangerous for hours after the unit itself has gone.
“To an unsuspecting child running barefoot or a beachgoer stepping onto the beach hours later or pet, this hidden hazard can inflict devastating, full-thickness burns in a fraction of a second,” he said.
Burying a hot barbecue makes it worse rather than better. The centre says covering coals with sand insulates them instead of putting them out, turning the ground into an oven.
The unit has been making this point for years. It issued a similar warning in July 2022, and Swansea Council appealed to beachgoers about abandoned disposable barbecues the summer before that.
The physiotherapist who happened to be there
David Fligelstone, a Swansea Bay physiotherapist, was on the beach at Oxwich when Holbrook was burned and helped treat her.
He has worked as an RNLI lifeguard and on the burns unit at Morriston, and said the danger is that it is invisible once the barbecue has been lifted away.
“These injuries are entirely preventable,” he said. “A simple action, such as thoroughly cooling the sand with water after removing a disposable BBQ, can prevent severe injuries, particularly in children.”
The health board is asking people to raise barbecues off the sand on stones or a stand, douse both the barbecue and the ground beneath it with seawater until it is cold to the touch, and put the cooled unit in a hot ash bin or take it home.
Anyone burned should run the injury under cool water for 20 minutes, not ice, and cover it loosely with cling film. Sand burns in children need urgent medical assessment.
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