A lightning strike damaged one of the town’s ocean rescue trucks on Wrightsville Beach on Thursday, July 14 and also may have injured a woman, town manager Tim Owens said.
Owens said the storms that rolled through the area around 4 p.m. generated a lighting strike that hit a Wrightsville Beach Ocean Rescue truck near Public Beach Access No. 2 near Shell Island Resort. A woman who was nearby suffered a broken ankle and may have been hit by the strike, Owens said, though neither the woman nor lifeguards were sure. The woman was taken to New Hanover County Regional Medical Center as a precaution, Owens said, adding she was “dazed, but OK.”
Lifeguards Scott Andersen and Ian Keillor were in the truck when the lightning hit the antenna, Owens said, sending sparks onto the hood of the truck. The lifeguards were uninjured and helped treat the woman with the broken ankle.
The lifeguards were warning beachgoers to leave the beach due to the threat of lightning when the bolt struck, Owens said.
With blue skies still in the area, many beachgoers weren’t paying attention to the lifeguards’ warning, Owens said, but after the strike, “everybody picked up their stuff and left.”
The truck wouldn’t start after the strike and was towed back to the town’s vehicle repair shop, he said.
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I was eating at Oceanic Pier when the police truck went barreling up the beach with sirens blaring but how was one to know that they were supposed to leave the beach just from this action as there was no speaker advising beach goers to leave the beach. For all They knew they were headed for an emergency. Just curious. Or was this a separate incidence than the one that was hit by lightening?