A five-year-old boy suffered horrific burns after treading on an abandoned barbecue buried in the sand at a busy beach.
Medics had to cut away blistered skin from Oliver Briggs' foot after the accident in Bournemouth, Dorset.
Mum Kristina Willmore carried screaming Oliver to the sea and held him in the water at Boscombe Beach for half an hour.
The pair then got a taxi to A&E and Oliver was transferred to a specialist burns unit at Salisbury District Hospital, Wilts.
He suffered severe blistering to the sole of his right foot and Ms Willmore was told he had narrowly avoided tissue damage.
He is now recovering at home in Bournemouth but he is still unable to put any weight on his injured foot and is crawling around five days after Tuesday's injury.
Ms Willmore, 31, is now warning of the dangers of old barbecues left on beaches.
She said: "He was on the beach and walked towards the toilets and I just heard him screaming the place down.
"I don't know if it was mothers intuition or something but I just knew instantly what he had done.
"I grabbed him and carried him into the sea and held him there for around half an hour.
"We later got a taxi to hospital and it was just horrible to see how his foot looked.
"Thankfully the specialists said he narrowly avoided soft tissue damage.
"He should make a full recovery but I can't let him go back to school until he can walk to the toilet on his own."
She added: "I appreciate people like to have BBQs and fires on the beach and that's fine but people need to be more careful.
"If people are leaving the beach they should put them out because something like this could easily happen again.
"I'm not saying they should be banned but I do think there should be a separate area for BBQs to keep people safe."
A spokesman for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole Council also asked people not to leave open fires on the beach.
Lews Alison, cabinet portfolio holder for tourism leisure and communities, said: "We want everyone to able to enjoy our beautiful beaches safely and encourage the public not to use them for open fires.
"We also want to highlight the dangers of covering over BBQs and fires with sand as this retains the heat and makes them harder to detect.
"If people do use disposable BBQs then we ask they are left on the edge of the sea wall to allow them to cool down and be collected by the cleansing team."
