Jogger's death from lightning shakes Beach vacationers

VIRGINIA BEACH

The thunderstorm that pounded Sandbridge on Sunday afternoon was so spectacular that Clark and Doug Hill lingered on the beach to watch the lightning.

But when a triple-pronged bolt touched down just to their north, the brothers made a run for their rental cottage.

"It was like, 'That was too close. Let's get out of here,' " Clark Hill, 42, recalled Monday.

Inside, the family from Salisbury, Mass., and Northern Virginia saw a massive bolt strike the beach. The air crackled with heat and shook the house.

When the storm cleared 15 minutes later, five of Clark's nieces and nephews, along with a friend's son, challenged him to a race to see the damage. The children, ranging in age from 9 to 14, had heard that when lighting strikes sand, it makes glass.

As Clark neared the waterline, he was stunned. A woman was lying in the sand, her clothes ripped and a shoe blown off.

He yelled to the youngsters to stop and screamed for someone to call 911.

When emergency rescuers arrived, the woman was pronounced dead. Stephanie Dawn Kirpes, 23, of Woodbridge, had been jogging on the beach when she was struck by lightning, police said.

Kirpes had graduated this year from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. She was on vacation in Sandbridge with a friend, said Melanie Kirpes, one of her older sisters.

"I am in shock right now," she said in a telephone interview. "How often can you say your little sister died of being struck by lightning?"

Kirpes is the 14th person nationwide to be killed by lightning this year and the third this month, according to the National Weather Service. The day before her death, a 19-year-old riding a personal watercraft on a lake in Columbia, S.C., was killed by a flash.

In 2007, 45 people were killed by lightning, including one in Virginia.

Since 2000, five people have been killed by lightning in Hampton Roads.

" The bottom line is, no place outside is safe" when lightning is present, said Richard Kithil, founder of the National Lightning Safety Institute in

Denver. "We have to conclude that she just ignored the hazard."

Beaches are dangerous because they are so flat, experts said.

"A person walking on the beach is probably going to be the tallest thing," said John Billet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Wakefield. "If you can hear thunder, you're probably within 5 miles of the lighting, and if you're within 5 miles of the lightning, you can be struck by it."

On Monday, just feet from where Kirpes was hit, teenagers played volleyball and children surfed on body boards.

The Hill family was back on the beach, trying to enjoy their second full day of vacation. Amy Hill, sister of Clark and Doug, looked around and said it was hard to believe it just looked like another day at the beach.

"It's like nothing happened right here," she said.

News researcher Jakon Hays contributed to this report.

Aaron Applegate, (757) 222-5122, aaron.applegate@pilotonline.com