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New York.- A 15-year-old boy miraculously survived after being struck by lightning in Central Park, when the electrical storm that hit New York City yesterday afternoon began.
This is Yassin Khalifa, a 2nd-year high school student, who was enjoying a picnic with friends near East Meadow (Upper East Side) when the storm began around 3:40 p.m. on Thursday. “I leaned against a tree and said to them: ‘Oh, guys, let's weather the storm,’ which, in retrospect, perhaps wasn't the best idea,” Khalifa said last night to ABC News from the hospital. According to the data, the fall rendered him unconscious for a few minutes, but he was alert when he was taken by ambulance to the Weill Cornell Medical Center.“Apparently, I was very lucky, because my spine was directly against the tree and I didn't suffer any nerve damage. So I haven't lost any kind of motor function. I'm very happy about that,” the young man detailed.Khalifa remains receiving treatment for second-degree burns on the neck and leg and expects to recover completely.
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From early on, the National Weather Service (NWS) had warned about intermittent severe rains that would fall yesterday in New York and the tri-state area. Later, damage was reported, including fallen trees on cars in Ridgewood and Maspeth, Queens (NYC); and also in Cranford, New Jersey. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the probability of being struck by lightning in a given year is less than 1 in 1 million; and almost 90% of lightning victims survive.
