Nearly 40 people in Lakeville, Minnesota came dangerously close to suffering fatal injuries, when a lightning from the sky hit a shelter in a park where they were celebrating a birthday. Three people sustained injuries, while one person had minor burns. All of them have survived miraculously without any major casualty.
They had gathered at Casperson Park for the birthday of one of their acquaintances. They chose a shelter with a wooden roof. The lightning had struck when the time was close to 5:30 in the evening. As their luck lasted, the lightning went through the roof into the ground.
Lucky Escape
Since nobody seemed to have been too close to the bolt and the shrapnel generated by the strike didn't hit anyone, the visible damage has been confined to the roof which now has a gaping hole at the spot where the thunderbolt fell.
"It could have been worse, absolutely. Just with the lightning hit itself, it could have put a bigger hole in the shelter, it could have brought down more wood," an eyewitness told KSTP.com. "It was definitely nerve-racking a little bit there," he further added.
Lightning strikes are quite common in the vast open spaces and this year, 12 people have died from lightning strikes in the country. This is well below the annual average of 43 deaths per year recorded usually.
A house nearby had a doorbell camera looking in the direction where the shelter was situated and it was able to catch one lightning bolt falling on to the ground, which could have been the same one that fell on the shelter in Casperson Park, reports said.
Those who have escaped the mishap are upbeat. A lightning usually contains 300 million volts of electricity, if not more. The air in the surrounding area of a lightning strike can get heated to such high temperatures that it can vaporize water. In the entire world, close to 2,000 people lose their lives every year due to these bolts from the sky.
