One person is dead and another 13 injured after a rare lightning storm struck Venice Beach, Calif., Sunday, sending a bolt into the water that traveled to swimmers and surfers.
The 20-year-old man who died was swimming and went missing in the water after the strike.
“The fire department assessed a total of 13 patients, and transported a total of eight patients,” Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman Katherine Main said.
Five others were injured, but did not require hospitalization, she said.
According to ABC:
Thunderstorms are very uncommon in the Los Angeles area, and people on the beach were shocked by what they experienced. Some said it felt like they got hit over the head with a board and then they were tingling all over.
“It sounded like a sonic boom. It literally shook the buildings,” Stuart Archer, who was playing volleyball on the beach, told ABC News. “Shook us on the courts.”
He said it was like somebody punched him in the head, his muscles locked up, and he fell.
“I looked up and everybody else was falling over,” he said.
A golfer in Catalina was also injured by that same storm, which hit the area before moving to Venice Beach.
SOURCE: ABC | VIDEO SOURCE: News Inc.
