By Lizzie Kaboski
cleveland.com
GRAFTON, Ohio — Three of the incarcerated men who were injured in a lightning strike at a state prison in Lorain County lost consciousness, and two of those men lost a pulse, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said.
The lightning strike occurred Tuesday at Grafton Correctional Institution, sending 16 incarcerated men to the hospital, four of whom were still hospitalized as of Wednesday night. A total of 19 people were injured, although three of them declined medical treatment, the ODRC said.
While Gov. Mike DeWine, in a press conference, described the strike as an unexpected happening while inmates were outside, footage from the prison shows a menacing picture. Video, provided by the ODRC, shows dark gray skies and rain, which had soaked the camera lens, before a bolt of lightning touched down. However, none of the inmates appear visible in the video.
When asked to clarify the governor’s comments, DeWine’s office said Thursday that its understanding was that no lightning had been seen for several minutes. The ODRC is conducting an “after-action review” to determine if the facility’s policies were followed.
ODRC incident reports offered the following details on the scene: Three of the injured men were found unresponsive on the ground after the lightning strike. Staff and medical personnel performed CPR on them, and two of the three stopped breathing and lost a pulse. All regained consciousness before being transported to a nearby hospital along with 13 others who suffered injuries, the incident reports show.
One individual had a laceration on his forehead and was crying due to shock; another was shaking from the voltage and reported he couldn’t hear out of one of his ears, ODRC reports said. Some of the incarcerated men had visible burns to their bodies and correctional officers reported their clothing was burned, according to the department.
It’s unclear whether the prison yard at the Grafton Correctional Institute had been open when the lightning struck. A lieutenant wrote in a report that he closed the yard at 4:58 p.m. due to rain and cleared the yard to reopen at 5:18 p.m. after the rain slowed. The incarcerated men were allowed to return to their housing units when the yard reopened.
Lightning struck at 5:20 p.m. and the lieutenant reported shouting at the men in the yard to return to the dining facility. Some continued to their units and some returned to an area designated as the inmate service area, the report says. The officer then noticed three individuals had fallen to the ground and called for medical help.
Another officer wrote in her report that the yard was closed when the lightning struck. Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer have reached out to the ODRC for clarification.
DeWine said Wednesday that said the inmates were “coming back from eating from the dining hall, walking outside [on] their normal pathway” when lightning struck. He said they didn’t anticipate the storms, even though the National Weather Service warned of flooding and thunderstorms.
“There was really no indication that there would be lightning,” the governor said. “Guards report no indication. The normal protocol is if there are storms going on, then they clear the yard. No one is outside. But they did not do that because they did not have that indication.”
The National Weather Service issued a flood watch advisory shortly before 1 p.m. Tuesday for Northeast Ohio , Northwest Ohio and North central Ohio. The NWS said “multiple rounds of showers and storms” with damaging winds, plus “a more organized line of severe thunderstorms” were possible.
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