A 13-year old has died from injuries sustained from a lightning strike that wounded six others at Orchard Beach on Thursday.
According to the FDNY, a group of beachgoers, which included children, were injured in an apparent lightning strike at Orchard Beach around 5:30 p.m. The beachgoers were taken to Jacobi Medical Center.
Carlos Ramos, 13, a Bronx resident had been in critical condition at Jacobi Medical Center before succumbing to his injuries on Friday.
A 13-year-old girl; a 41-year-old man; a 33-year-old woman; a 14-year-old boy; a 12-year-old girl; and a 5-year-old boy were also struck on Thursday, but are all expected to survive.
The city Parks Department said that before the beachgoers were injured, lifeguards had “cleared all swimmers from the water, and Parks staff made announcements over the public address system instructing patrons to clear the beach.”
While lightning strikes are generally a rare occurrence, they are most frequent during the summer months.
Climatologists in recent years have uncovered that the prevalence of lightning strikes are linked to climate change, with lightning strikes becoming 300% more common in the last 11 years, according to a study in Geophysical Research Letters.
