A 13-year-old girl was hospitalized in critical condition after she was struck by lightning Wednesday afternoon outside the Garfield Park Conservatory on the West Side, officials say.
Emergency crews were called to the 300 block of North Central Park Avenue at about 1 p.m. for reports of a girl struck by lightning, Chicago Fire Department spokesman Larry Merritt said.
The girl was transported to Stroger Hospital in critical condition, Merritt said.
She was with her family visiting an outdoor garden space at the park when she was struck, a spokesperson with the Chicago Park District said.
Authorities have not released any additional information.
Strong storms started developing in the west and northwest suburbs around 12:30 p.m. and moved into the Chicago area over the next three hours, according to the National Weather Service, prompting a severe thunderstorm watch.
Roughly 5,000 lighting strikes were recorded between 1 and 2 p.m. from Lake County to Will County as the strongest part of the storm moved through the area, the weather service said, citing preliminary data.
Daniel Jackson and his stepson Jordan Garrett, of Destiny’s Water Ice Co., were selling sorbet out of a cart outside the conservatory when the rains started rolling in. The downpour briefly stopped, they said, before they heard the rumbling of thunder and saw lightning flicker in the sky.
Related
“We were sitting here when we heard it,” Jackson said. “We just heard a big old boom” like a movie explosion, he added. At first they though the lightning had struck a tree but then realized someone may have been hit.
“We heard a little bit of screaming,” Garrett said.
Firefighters and an ambulance showed up not long after the strike. “They came out with a stretcher, and there was a little girl, she was small,” he said.
Jackson said there were more children out there playing, and “it could have happened to all the kids.”
“I’m trying to figure out what caused it to hit her. It shook me up,” he said.
About 40 million lighting strikes hit the ground in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, adding that the odds of being struck by lightning are less than one in a million.
(Source: Sun-Times Media Wire & Chicago Sun-Times 2022. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Related
