By Bill Bleyer and Shomial Ahmad
Newsday (New York)
Copyright 2006 Newsday, Inc.
Lightning strikes yesterday critically injured a Coram woman wading in Long Island Sound, sent five children on a Uniondale baseball field to the hospital, and was the suspected cause of a large warehouse fire, also in Uniondale, authorities said.
The same storm that hit Uniondale had prompted the earlier evacuation of beaches at Jones Beach as thousands gathered for the Fourth of July fireworks display. Heavy rain, wind and lightning lasted about 15 minutes but quickly cleared. The beaches were closed at 4:15 p.m. and reopened by 6 p.m.
Lightning from a second severe thunderstorm that traveled along the North Shore apparently struck Ramona Garcia-Fernandez, 29, who was found unconscious and without a pulse shortly after 6 p.m. at Shoreham Town Beach by state Department of Environmental Conservation and county officers. She had been wading with family members, Suffolk police said.
After her pulse was re-established by CPR, the Rocky Point Fire Department rescue squad carried her by all-terrain vehicle to the closed Shoreham power plant where a county police helicopter flew her to Stony Brook University Hospital. Garcia-Fernandez was listed in critical condition last night, police said.
An earlier lightning strike at Smith Street Park in Uniondale sent five children to the hospital.
Randy Hall of Hempstead said the Uniondale Sport Club was on the baseball field when rain began to fall. After the team sought shelter behind the backstop, lightning began to strike around a tree near a chain link fence at the edge of the field. One strike hit the tree, sending a current through the fence and shocking five children leaning against it.
Hall, a parent of one of the players, said the injured children were between 10 and 14 years old and were taken to Nassau University Medical Center for evaluation.
“You could feel the charge, kind of like your hair stands up on the end,” Hall said.
Lightning was also the suspected cause of a large fire in a commercial building in Uniondale. The Uniondale Fire Department responded to a call to 439 Oak St. at 5:30 p.m. and found the brick warehouse in flames.
Fire Chief Darnell Eason said the fire was accelerated by at least one propane tank that ruptured in the fire. Because the center portion of the structure collapsed, “the building will be knocked down,” Eason said.
The building houses Win-Holt Equipment Group, a manufacturer of metal carts, according to fire officials.
National Weather Service meteorologist Bill Goodman at Upton said thunderstorms moved along the North Shore and South Shore. “We had some pretty strong wind gusts, mainly across the South Shore in Nassau with gusts of 40 to 50 mph.” With the North Shore storm, he said, “most of the lightning strikes were out over the water” away from the shore. “But you don’t have to be right under a lightning storm to be in danger. "