A six-year-old girl was badly burned
after she ran in bare feet over extremely hot sand where beach-goers had
previously set up a barbecue.
Olivia
Wilson screamed in pain after the horrific incident on Exmouth beach in
Devon, which left skin hanging off her foot in strips.
Now
her family is lobbing to have disposable barbecues banned from beaches,
as they leave red-hot patches of sand which are invisible to the eye.
Olivia is believed to be the fifth victim to have suffered serious burns on the same stretch of beach in the past two months.
Hurt: Six-year-old Olivia Wilson injured herself by running through red-hot sand on Exmouth beach
Her mother Charlie, 27, said:
'I have never heard a child scream like that - nobody should see their
little baby go through this.
'I
don't want this to happen to anyone else. People have got to get the
message before a baby goes face first into the hot sand in the same
situation.'
The six-year-old was injured on Sunday when she was building sandcastles on the beach with her mother.
She
accidentally ran through a patch of sand where a group of youths had
been using a disposable barbecue around half and hour earlier.
Olivia was taken to Exmouth Hospital, where she was treated for burns and blistering caused by contact with the sand.
Injury: Olivia suffered bad burns and blistering and will require several weeks of specialist therapy
She now faces weeks of
specialist burns treatment before her foot is completely healed, and has
been too scared to play on the beach since.
Doctors
at the hospital said that the schoolgirl was the fifth person they had
treated for sand-related burns over the past two months.
Olivia's grandmother Pauline Gilmour said: 'I would like to see these barbecues banned from the beach altogether.
'Once that barbecue's been taken away there's nothing to see on the sand - and that's clearly dangerous.'
Danger: Exmouth beach, pictured, has seen five people injured from sand burns in the past three months
Mother-of-two Mrs Wilson said
that following the accident, she took Olivia into the sea to cool off,
but 'the skin just washed off her foot'.
She added that a group of around 20 yoths had been barbecuing near to where her daughter was hurt.
'They
didn't do anything wrong, they just didn't realise,' Mrs Wilson said.
'It was about 25 minutes after they had packed away the barbecue.
'It just goes to show it can burn for a long time. People need to know what can happen or it won't stop.
'There
was no mark on the sand. What people don't realise is that the sand
underneath is still burning like coal long after the barbecue's been
removed.'
DAILYMAIL
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