A scuba diver was reportedly struck as well and is shown being treated above. No additional details have been found about where he was located when struck relative to the water, submerged or at the surface.
From:
https://twitter.com/Venice311/status...690369/photo/1
There was a rare lightning storm with injuries yesterday afternoon in Venice Beach, CA. The NWS reported at least four lightning strikes impacting swimmers, surfers and a scuba diver as well as people standing on the beach. Two were knocked unconscious while in the water with one 20 year old man drowning and the other being recovered and revived. Numbers varying in the media but perhaps as many as fourteen were injured in the lightning strike.
Emergency response
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/
A radar image of the lightning storm that came ashore in Venice yesterday.
The La Times said:
"Sunday's approximately 15-minute thunderstorm struck as more than 20,000 people were visiting the southern portion of Venice Beach; at least four direct lightning strikes hit at about 2:20 p.m. A 20-year-old man who was pulled from the water was killed and at least seven others were injured -- one of them critically.
Lightning from the same storm hit Catalina Island about 90 minutes earlier, injuring a 57-year-old man on a golf course in Avalon and igniting two brush fires, officials said.
Witnesses said the thunder and lightning were so explosive that it shook homes, triggered car alarms and caused dogs to start barking."
"Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the lightning strikes that hit the Southern California coast Sunday from San Diego to Venice are extremely rare. The West Coast has the lowest incidence of lightning strikes in the nation; the odds of being hit are 1 in 7.5 million in California compared to 1 in 600,000 in Florida, the nation's "lightning champion," he said."
"It was all blue skies, except there were some dark clouds coming from the south," he said. "Then just one big crack of lightning — pretty unexpected."
More at
http://www.latimes.com/local/westsid...728-story.html
The appearance of the storm
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...icle-1.1882080
Crews respond and setup a triage area for treatment of the victims. The Los Angeles City Fire Department deployed 47 firefighters, eight ambulances and five fire engines to the 3800 block of Ocean Front Walk in Venice.
https://twitter.com/ABC7/status/4935...888768/photo/1
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