Posted on 07/29/2005 6:17:21 PM PDT by Pharmboy
FRESNO, Calif. (AP) - Lightning struck a group of Boy Scouts taking shelter from a storm, killing the troop leader and leaving a 13-year-old boy brain-dead in the latest tragedy to befall the organization this week, authorities and the teen's grandfather said. Six others were injured when the lightning bolt made a direct strike on a tarp the Scouts had set up in a meadow in Sequoia National Park on Thursday.
Ryan Collins, 13, was being kept on a ventilator so that his organs could be donated, the boy's grandfather said Friday. Collins was listed in critical condition at the University Medical Center in Fresno, but his family had given up hope.
"He would never recover or anything else," grandfather Bill Collins said.
The lightning strike came just days after four Scout leaders were electrocuted while putting up a tent at the National Scout Jamboree in Virginia. Dozens of Scouts were sickened by the stifling heat two days later at the jamboree.
At least one of the injured in the lightning strike was kept alive only because the troop managed to administer CPR for an hour, park ranger Alex Picavet said. It is not known which injured person that was.
"That's amazing," Picavet said. "It's very difficult. It's probably because of their Boy Scout training."
The assistant scoutmaster, Steve McCullagh, 29, was killed instantly when the bolt struck, the Tulare County coroner's office said.
"He didn't even make it off the mountain," said Sue Collins, the boy's mother, crying along with her husband and younger son at the hospital. "It's horrible. It's a fluke."
One troop member was being kept for observation at the Fresno hospital, and all the others were treated and released from another hospital, authorities said.
The scout group from St. Helena, which included five adults and seven teenage scouts, had been camping for a week as part of a nine-day backcountry hike along the John Muir Trail.
A lightning bolt made a direct strike on one of two tarps they had set up in a meadow. Two teenagers ran 25 minutes to a ranger station after the strike, and five helicopters flew in to evacuate the group.
"They did the best they could in the situation they were in," Picavet said. "They didn't have metal poles, and stayed away from high points."
Collins said his grandson was a scout for more than three years and loved the outdoors.
"He was a fabulous boy. He was doing what he loved to do," Collins said. "It's just a tremendous shock to everybody."
Answer my question about What the MESSAGE is....
then we'll get to yours
The Boy Scout group was in a meadow surrounded by trees when the lightning storm became heavy. They split into two groups and set up two tarps more than 50 feet apart to seek refuge from the storm, Picavet said. Then, a lightning strike made a direct hit on one tarp.
"Everyone under that tarp was affected in some degree," Picavet said.
Using a map of the park, two teenage boys made a 25-minute run to the nearest ranger station and hurried back with the on-duty ranger, Picavet said.
God not invent the laws of nature. God, being real, depends on them for His existence.
"Let it be known that electrostatic breakdown was NOT invented by mankind...the event is indeed an action of God....and for good reasons...
The event is not an action of God, it happens purely, because of the local conditions. Those conditions are not set up by God. In this case it's just weather. There's nothing more to it.
Given that God pretty much controls earthly events, he wanted to bring these Boy Scouts to heaven, for reasons I cannot, and do not, need to understand.
Creationists and Intelligent Design types usually complain that evolution is based on materialistic understandings of how the natural world works.
One can't have it both ways--either G-d intervenes directly in every event or there are materialistic explanations. Perhaps this was an indication of supernatural power, but more likely it has a material explanation based on science and some bad luck and randomness. If not, then it must be due to an ID's supernatural's design or pre-destination.
Good for you!!!
That's alot more honest than what you said originally...... "God's sending a message" which had a more ominuous and punishing ring to it...but then you knew that.
It's static electricity. To be simple and short just as you wipe electrons free from the rug when you walk and they collect on your shoe and conduct everywhere from your fingertips to your head, the wind does the same. The charge collects in the atmosphere. WInds are greater in storms and the water droplets act as dielectrics collecting and concentrating charges.
When charges are separated, an electric field results. The more charge, or the smaller the distance of separation, the higher the field. Air and moist air can only support a certain field before the air breaks down into a plasma(separate charges) and conducts. The conduction is the lighning bolt. The measure of electric field strength is in volts/unit length.
I read online that more people die each year in Ga. from lightning than from snake bites. My son wanted to go outside today when it was storming BAD. Lots of thunder and lightning and pouring rain. I printed out the story about the scouts, and the two who died in Ga. after lightning strike. Scary.
And you don't think God directs lighting strikes?
That was my point. Do you think that it is a random occuranance whether the victim is a child molester or a Boy Scout?
They're not that random, but you can consider them so. God most certainly does not direct them.
It was not too long ago that Ben Franklin showed that lightning was atmospheric electricity.
It's been a bad summer for the boy scouts.
Boy Scouts have accidents all the time. If you go out in the world, camp in tents, go boating, camping, rock climbing, there will be accidents.
What's happening is that the MSM is reporting everything they can get about Scouts and accidents.
Remember the Shark Summer, when shark attacks were actually way down, but media reports tripled?
I am just going to add here that last nights news report on this incident said, "the strike happened as one of the staff members was moving from one site of tarps to the next." That is loosely quoted BTW.
BSA: Bad-luck Scouts of America
hey mr. z you could put your eye out with that thing
My neighbor's Christmas trees sure do.
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