Comment Two men and two women were taken to the hospital with life-threatening injuries Thursday afternoon after an apparent lightning strike in Lafayette Square, just north of the White House, according to D.C. fire officials. The four adults were found shortly before 7 p.m. in the center of the park, about 100 feet from the Andrew Jackson statue, fire department spokesman Vito Maggiolo said. All four people were taken to hospital with potentially life-threatening injuries. The Washington Monument was closed after a lightning strike The exact cause of their injuries remains under investigation, authorities said. The lightning was triggered by a severe storm that swept through the District shortly before 7 p.m. The National Weather Service issued a severe thunderstorm warning for much of the Beltway between 6:30 and 7:15 p.m., warning of the risk of damaging wind gusts up to 60 mph and quarter-sized hail. Chris Vagasky, an analyst for Vaisala, which operates a national lightning network, said in a message that there was a “6-year flash near the White House that struck the same spot on the ground” at 6:49 p.m. He explained that it means six individual power surges hit the same spot on the ground within half a second. Numerous thunderstorms, featuring frequent lightning, swept through the area Thursday afternoon after temperatures soared into the mid-90s earlier in the day, prompting a heat warning. Heat indices, a measure of how hot it feels factoring in the humidity, reached 100 to 110 degrees. What I learned from 20 years of photographing lightning in DC Thermal storms unleashed 58 mph wind gusts at Reagan National Airport and downed trees around Winchester, Columbia and Baltimore. The torrents also caused many reports of flooded roads around Baltimore. Lightning kills 23 people in the United States in an average year and has led to nine deaths so far in 2022. This is a developing story and will be updated.
