A 13-year-old girl who was hit by a lightning strike on a beach in Possidi on the Halkidiki peninsula in the northern part of the country was pronounced dead after being transferred to a health center in Kassandra.
The girl was reportedly taking a walk with her mother along the beach at the well-frequented summer resort when the lightning struck at roughly 3:10 pm. There have been heavy rains in the area since the early morning.
“We were at the beach as a family. We came out of the sea and it was drizzling at the time. A bolt of lightning [right] in front of us,” the father of the 13-year-old girl told newsit.gr.
The family is from Nea Moudania. “My wife was leading, [and] my daughter was [just] behind her. They both fell to the ground in the sand. We had already managed to get to the beach. We had come out of the sea. Lightning struck and my girl never got back up,” added the father.
He continued: “It wasn’t long before the storm started. We came out of the sea to go somewhere for protection. It had been 5-10 minutes since we had gone outside and then lightning struck. He fell on the beach. The lightning struck my wife back and she fell down, too, but she is fine. Rescuers came to help, but, unfortunately, they didn’t make it.”
“I am very bitter, I am shocked, [and] I have no words,” Anastasia Chalkia, mayor of Kassandra said in speaking to newsit.gr. “I am very sorry for what happened. I went to Kassandra Health Center and saw it and I don’t know what to say. The doctors did everything they could but they didn’t succeed. Even the doctors were crying because of what happened.”
Lightning strikes in Greece
In May last year, a young man from the UK was fatally struck by lightning while swimming at a beach on the eastern coast of the island of Rhodes, according to state broadcaster ERT.
At the time of the incident, the area around the Greek island was apparently experiencing severe thunderstorms. The 26-year-old tourist was reportedly in the water during a thunderstorm at Agia Agathi Beach. He remained in the water despite heavy rains and other beachgoers warnings.
Rescue crews and an ambulance arrived at the scene quite quickly and attempted to keep him alive during the journey to the local medical center. Efforts to resuscitate the Briton were unsuccessful, and the incident was later investigated by the Rhodes Coast Guard.
Thankfully, fatalities caused by lightning strikes are relatively rare in Greece. Nevertheless, such incidents do happen, and caution should be taken during extreme weather events and in the case of thunderstorms.
During an incident in 2020, a woman was struck and killed by lightning on the island of Skopelos whilst she was working on her farm.
According to a statistical analysis conducted by scholars from the University of Patras, in the years from 2010 to 2019, there were a total of 23 deaths caused by lightning strikes in Greece.
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