Lightning strike kills 17-year-old boy in Florida
A 17-year-old boy was killed July 17 after a lightning strike hit him on a Florida beach.
Walker Berthune was enjoying the day near the waters of Marco Island when he was hit, according to the National Lightning Safety Council’s latest hurricane fatality update.
Berthune’s death is the first lightning-related fatality in Florida this year and the nation’s fourth. Two other deaths were recorded in June, one in New Jersey and the other in Georgia. The third was in Pennsylvania just a day before Berthune’s death.
Florida leads the nation in lightning-related deaths, NLSC said. Since 2006, Florida has had 76 lightning deaths.
In September 2020, a 58-year-old Apopka man, Jesus Perez, was fatally struck while standing in a yard next to a tree. Earlier in the year, 35-year-old Raul Rome Teoba died in Middleburg while doing roof work. And the day before that, 41-year-old Jose Rivera was killed doing lawn work in Port St. Lucie.
Orange County was not listed in the NLSC 14-year data report of lightning deaths, but Orange and Seminole counties recorded the highest averages of cloud-to-ground lightning events in the state between 2016 and 2020, according to an analysis by Vaisala Corporation, a global weather surveillance company. Florida overall average led the nation in cloud-to-ground lightning activity.
Last year, total recorded deaths were reported at 17, a low for the nation compared with 2018 and 2019, when there were 21 fatalities each year.
Experts believe the 2020 total is probably higher but has been reported lower because of other media interests such as COVID-19, according to the Lightning Safety Council.
