Two Norwegian sisters, aged 12 and 18, died when they were struck by lightning, a third sister was seriously injured. She is out of danger.
According to the mayor of the municipality of Hareid, the sisters from Oslo were on holiday in the mountain area, on an island on the west coast of Norway, about 20 kilometers south of Alesund.
The surviving sister alerted emergency services just after 5 p.m. yesterday and said she was afraid her two sisters were dead. A helicopter was already nearby. The girls were almost at the top of Mount Melshorn, a popular hiking area at 668 meters above sea level, when the weather turned.
Bad weather was predicted. “Then you should not be on the mountain, but it came earlier and faster than expected,” the police said at a press conference.
Blue sky
The emergency services had to turn out several times for rescue operations because of the bad weather. Such violent thunderstorms are very unusual in the area.
“The weather was nice all day, then cloudy for an hour and then the thunderstorm,” says a local resident. “Shortly after that, the sky was blue again.”
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