Argentina’s beaches are getting quite dangerous during the southern hemisphere’s summer. Seventy people were injured by a swarm of piranhas about two weeks ago and now lightning has killed three teens and injured 22 people in a seaside spa of Villa Gesell, a coastal town in the province of Buenos Aires. Earth can be quite an unforgiving place at times.
The lightning struck some tents right on the beach. The victims were 17, 19 and 21 years old. Among the 22 injured, there were 16 adults and six kids. Two young women are still in the hospital, one in critical state.
Talking to the Argentinian newspaper la Nación, the owner of the spa said it was terrible:
We saw a ball of fire and we heard a deafening noise. The people in the tents flew three or four meters because of the impact. One of the men died burned while driving a quad and another one died when he was playing soccer.
It could have been much worse: “It had rained a bit before. Thankfully many people were gone. Otherwise I don’t know how many more people could have been injured.”
By the way, according to the latest statistics, there’s one in a million chance of being struck by lightning in the United States. Exactly one in 1,107,143 (a figure obtained by dividing the population (310,000,000 people) by the number of people struck by lightning (280.)