A 58-year-old German tourist was killed by lightning on the popular Dodecanese holiday island of Rhodes on Friday afternoon while walking near the beach with her husband, in the latest fatal incident linked to severe electrical storms in Greece.
The woman was struck at about 2:45 p.m. in southern Rhodes and died at the scene. Emergency responders were called but found her without a pulse and were unable to revive her. Her 62-year-old husband suffered minor injuries.
The couple had arrived on Rhodes several days earlier for a vacation. According to initial information, they had been swimming shortly before the incident and were walking on sandy ground near the coast when the lightning struck.
File Photo: Rhodes, umbrellas on the beach (Yiannis Panagopoulos/ Eurokinissi)
The death comes after a summer marked by several episodes of intense lightning activity across Greece. In August, a storm over the Mani peninsula produced more than 2,000 electrical discharges within a 25-kilometer radius of a weather station near Kokkala over six hours. About half of the strikes were recorded in a single hour as rainfall peaked. A woman in nearby Oitylo was injured when lightning struck while she was inside her car.
In September, severe thunderstorms over Attica brought frequent lightning and caused a woman walking in Ilioupoli to suffer cardiac arrest after being startled by a lightning flash and thunderclap. She was not directly struck and was hospitalized in intensive care. The same storm system also sparked a fire on Mount Hymettus.
Lightning has also demonstrated its ability to cause mass casualties among livestock. On Sept. 23, a strike killed 88 sheep on Mount Peristeri in Epirus during a severe storm that also damaged roads and a livestock facility.
