Eight children and three adults on Saturday were struck by lightning in a Paris park after a sudden spring storm sent a bolt crashing down upon a children’s birthday party, a spokesman for Paris’ fire service said.
He credited an off-duty firefighter with playing a critical role in getting immediate medical help to those struck, but one child remained in critical condition.
Another group of people at a children’s soccer match in western Germany were also hit by lightning on Saturday afternoon, leaving three adults seriously injured.
Photo: AP
The birthday group had sought shelter under a tree at Park Monceau, a northwest Paris park popular with well-to-do families, when a lightning bolt touched down, according to Paris fire service spokesman Eric Moulin.
He put the children’s ages at about nine.
Moulin said that Pascal Gremillet, an off-duty firefighter, was visiting a museum nearby when he noticed the commotion and discovered nine of the 11 people lying unconscious. He immediately went to work.
“He saw who was the most seriously injured. He did a quick triage of the victims. He did first aid. He alerted the rescue services,” Moulin told reporters. “Without his actions, it would have been much worse.”
Gremillet told journalists that one child’s heart had stopped beating when he arrived.
“I did first aid [and] a heart massage,” Gremillet said.
The other children “were in shock,” he said.
Pierre Carli, an emergency medical services official, later told journalists that for one of the children, “the prognosis is probably more serious and he is now hospitalized on life support.”
For the seven other children, the news was “rather good,” Carli said.
Their injuries were not considered life threatening.
In western Germany, more than 30 people were taken to hospital after lighting struck at the end of a children’s soccer match, police said.
Three adults were seriously injured in the incident in the town of Hoppstaedten, including the 45-year-old referee, who suffered a cardiac arrest after being hit directly by lightning and had to be revived by onlookers and a doctor, police said.
All 29 of the children, ages nine to 11, who had taken part in the match between local teams SG Perlbachtal and SG Meisenheim were also taken to nearby hospitals, police said in a statement.
However, it stressed that it was “a purely precautionary measure” in their case.
They said that the condition of three of the more seriously injured children was improving.
Footage shot by the fire service showed a dramatic scene at a nearby bank that was commandeered as a makeshift treatment center, with children wrapped in gold thermal blankets sitting and lying on the building’s tiled floor as firefighters administered first aid before evacuating the patients to area hospitals.
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