Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
1 dead, 1 hurt in lightning strike
Florida has long had nation’s most fatalities; summer months are year’s most dangerous
A woman has died and a man was taken to a hospital in critical condition after being struck by lightning in Parkland on Wednesday, fire officials said.
The fatal strike happened about 2 p.m. at C.W. Hendrix Farms, 12210 Loxahatchee Road, west of State Road 7.
The man was conscious when he was taken to Broward Health North in Deerfield Beach, said Division Chief Michael Moser, of the Coral Springs-Parkland Fire Department.
Up until Wednesday, there had been two lightning fatalities in the United States so far this year — one in Texas and one in Florida, according to John Jensenius, a lightning expert with the National Weather Service.
Florida consistently leads the nation in lightning deaths, with 51 people killed from 2007 to 2016. That’s more than double the 21 fatalities in Texas, the next closest state during the same period, according to the National Weather Service.
This year’s first lightning-related death in Florida happened April 8 in White Springs, records show.
A 23-year-old woman was struck and killed and four others were injured while mud bogging — an off-road vehicle race in mud pits — at Woodpecker Mud Bog. The group
was reportedly taking shelter under the goose-neck of a trailer when lightning struck a tree about 25 to 30 feet away, Jensenius said.
Annually, Florida sees about six lightning fatalities and 39 injuries, according to the Division of Emergency Management. Only rip currents are a more prolific weather-related killer, claiming nearly two dozen lives per year statewide.
More than 70 percent of lightning deaths occur in June, July and August, when people work and play outdoors. July sees more lightning deaths and injuries reported than any other month.
The reason South Florida is so vulnerable to lightning: Thunderstorms form 80 to 100 days per year — more than anywhere else in the nation — and can spit out hundreds of strikes per hour.
Moser confirmed that lightning was the cause of death and injury Wednesday in Parkland. He said it might have been the same strike that caused both.
“We’ve seen indirect strikes critically injure and kill,” Moser said.
The identities of the woman who died and the man who was injured were not released.
It was not disclosed whether they were workers or customers at the farm, which grows, ships and wholesales produce.