One fatality has been reported in NYC as a result of last night's weird thunderstorm. 61-year-old Richard Schwartz, a prosecutor with the state attorney general’s office, was walking home near the Christ Church on Clinton Street in Cobble Hill at 8 p.m. when a bolt of lightning struck the scaffold. The lightning (and extreme wind) rattled the church so severely that it knocked scaffolding loose, sending it tumbling down on top of him.
"This building is made of large stones, [the lightning] caused these stones to dislodge," FDNY Deputy Chief Vinny Mandala told NY1. "Some of them fell through the roof of the lower portion of the church and some of them fell through and knocked the scaffolding down." Witness Nicola Wheir said, "I saw that the scaffolding was coming down. I realized there was a man walking under the scaffolding at that moment. I wasn't sure what hit him but the next thing I saw, he hit the ground."
Schwartz was rushed to Long Island College Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. A reporter for the NY Post was at the hospital when his wife arrived; she told the tabloid that her daughter "doesn’t know. I’m leaving in a few hours to drive up [to Vermont] and tell her. It’s going to be devastating news."
Meteorologists confirmed that last night's storm was a derecho, a line of intense thunderstorms with extreme wind gusts that form along a fast moving front over many miles. Last night's storm hit NYC after traveling over 250 miles in roughly five and a half hours. Wind gusts exceeded 50 miles an hour at JFK airport. At least 1,300 Con Ed customers lost power as a result of the storm, and trees were toppled throughout the area.
