Coastguard describes "treacherous recovery" of pensioner's body after quicksand tragedy at Solway Firth

dailyrecord.co.uk:

A Coastguard has described the “treacherous recovery” of the body of a woman who got stuck in quicksand.A full-scale search took place in the Cummertrees and Powfoot area of Dumfries and Galloway after Shona Campbell got into difficulties on Monday evening.The following evening a body was found and while it has still to be formally identified, police say the 74-year-old’s family have been informed.HM Coastguard senior coastal operations officer, Stewart Bryden said: “It was a treacherous recovery for us, we really had to think outside the box on how we were going to do this – and it was night time so it was starting to get dark.“We had to work in the quicksand - and it was difficult for the helicopter as the winchman had gone down to recover the lady and had nowhere to stand as it was that soft.“We had our mud teams out from Annan with our platforms to stand in.

There’s one platform still there – it sank, it’s gone.“It was a very difficult recovery but I have to take my hat off to everybody involved - Nith Rescue, mountain rescue, the police, the fire brigade.“Everybody worked brilliantly as a multi-agency partnership.

It wasn’t the result we wanted but at least the lady has been recovered for the family.”Ms Campbell was visiting the area with her family at West Moss-side Caravan Park in Cummertrees and had gone for a walk with her dog on Monday evening when she got stuck around 5pm – little more than an hour before high tide.She phoned 999 and a search took place.

It was stood down around 11pm and resumed on Tuesday morning.At around 5.40pm that day, a woman’s body was found.A Police Scotland spokesman said: “Formal identification has still to take place.