See more of T-Bois Blues Fest on Facebook ||||| A New Orleans woman was killed and two others injured when lightning struck on or near their tent at the T-Bois Blues Festival in Larose, authorities said Sunday (March 18). 
 
 Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre identified the dead woman as 28-year-old Jacqui Stavis, a massage therapist from New Orleans. Webre said Stavis was found unresponsive after the lightning strike occurred Friday around 10:05 p.m. Stavis was pronounced dead Saturday at a Lafourche Parish hospital, Webre said. 
 
 Two other unidentified New Orleans women who were in the same tent were injured and hospitalized. A 30-year-old woman remained hospitalized Sunday in Larose, while a 24-year-old woman more seriously injured was transported to University Medical Center in New Orleans, officials said. Webre also said a large Labrador dog in the tent with the women was killed in the incident. 
 
 Investigators learned the three women had retreated into a small personal tent during a thunderstorm near the festival grounds, Webre said. After the lightning strike, the sheriff said, Stavis was unresponsive and her two friends had injuries associated with electric shock. 
 
 An attendee said festival organizers were not allowing new tents to be set up Saturday. The three-day festival, headlined by guitarist Anders Osborne, ran Thursday through Saturday. Staged at the site of an alligator farm, the festival has come to be known in recent years as the "Cajun Burning Man." 
 
 Balloon Chain at TBoiS Posted by Jacqui Stavis on Tuesday, March 15, 2016 
 
 It is beyond comprehension and utter sadness that one of the brightest lights in the universe is no longer shining on... Posted by Nola Bunarchy on Saturday, March 19, 2016 
 
 I opened Facebook this morning to find tons of messages to Jacqui Stavis. I started reading them and it hit me that she... Posted by Matthew L. Crowson on Sunday, March 20, 2016 ||||| See more of Scott Plaisance on Facebook ||||| One Dead, Two Injured Following Lightning Strike at Larose Music Festival 
 
 Sheriff Craig Webre reported one woman has died, and two others were hospitalized after a lightning strike Friday night at a Larose outdoor music festival. Jacqui Stavis (age 28) of New Orleans was pronounced dead at a local hospital on Saturday. Two other females (ages 30 and 24), also of New Orleans, were also injured in he incident. 
 
 Shortly after 10 p.m. on Friday, March 18, deputies received a call that three people were injured after a lightning strike at the T-Bois Blues Festival grounds. Deputies, volunteer firefighters, and EMTs responded to the scene to assist and found Stavis unresponsive, along with two other females who were injured. All three were transported to the hospital for treatment. Stavis was later pronounced dead on Saturday. The 24-year-old victim was transported to University Medical Center in New Orleans while the 30-year-old victim remained at a local hospital. A large Labrador, which was with the females, also died in the incident. 
 
 Investigators learned the three women had retreated into a small personal tent on the festival grounds during a period of severe weather. Following a lightning strike, Stavis was unresponsive, and the other two had injuries commonly associated with electric shock. ||||| New Orleans transplant killed by lightning strike: ‘She just dove into the culture' of city 
 
 New Orleans transplant killed by lightning strike: ‘She just dove into the culture' of city 
 
 On Saturday, Jacqui Stavis, a New Orleans massage therapist, became the nation’s first lightning fatality of 2016, according to National Weather Service records. 
 
 Friends described Stavis, 28, as a joyful, petite sprite who loved music, art and New Orleans. She died at Lady of the Sea General Hospital in Cut Off one day after lightning struck her campsite at the T-Bois Blues Festival in Larose. 
 
 Longtime WWOZ Radio program director Dwayne Breashears knew Stavis through a tight-knit group of New Orleanians who travel each year to the Burning Man festival in Nevada. 
 
 “We are all just numbed by it,” Breashears said of Stavis’ death, adding that it seemed she’d been in New Orleans all of her life, though she grew up in New England, New York and Wisconsin. “She just dove into the culture of New Orleans, just became a part of it. She just wanted to do positive things here.” 
 
 Bethany Bultman, of the New Orleans Musicians’ Clinic, described Stavis as “a force for good” who had put down roots in a city she had long admired. 
 
 More On This Topic Woman killed, 2 injured after lightning strikes campsite Friday night at Larose music festival 
 
 Bultman, a friend of Stavis’ grandmother in Provincetown, Massachusetts, said that even as a teenager, Stavis would immediately listen to any New Orleans CD or read any New Orleans book that Bultman suggested. 
 
 “She loved the culture of New Orleans; she couldn’t get enough,” said Bultman, who wasn’t surprised when Stavis moved here with her boyfriend, musician Jake Gold, after the couple graduated together in 2009 from Wesleyan University in Connecticut. 
 
 A few years later, when Bultman reigned as queen of the Krewe du Vieux parade in 2013, she wasn’t surprised that Stavis was one of the first people she saw in the crowd. “Jacqui embraced everything and she participated and she was everywhere,” Bultman said. 
 
 Friday’s lightning strike injured two other women, ages 24 and 30, who had sought shelter from a severe storm in the same small tent with Stavis. One woman was transported to University Medical Center in New Orleans, while the other remained in a hospital not far from the festival, according to a statement by Lafourche Parish Sheriff Craig Webre. 
 
 Others who spent the night in tents on festival grounds were shaken by how hard the storm hit and described winds, rain, thunder and lightning so ferocious that people on opposite ends of the same small tent couldn’t hear each other even if they shouted. 
 
 After receiving a call about the injuries shortly after 10 p.m. Friday, Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office deputies, volunteer firefighters and paramedics went to the scene and found Stavis unresponsive and the other two woman suffering from electric shock. All three were taken to a hospital. 
 
 A large Labrador dog also died during the incident, Webre reported. 
 
 No cause of death was available for Stavis. 
 
 However, National Weather Service alerts note that 10 percent of lightning strikes can result in death, often from cardiac arrest or irreversible brain damage. Though the chance of being hit by lightning in a given year is less than 1 in 1 million, it does happen regularly. Over the past 30 years, the United States has averaged 49 reported lightning fatalities each year. 
 
 The low-key, three-day T-Bois event calls itself a blues festival, though it also features other types of music. It offers home-cooked Cajun food, catfish, crawfish, beer and camping for all ticket-holders and is held on an alligator and crawfish farm owned for more than a century by the family of festival producer “Alligator Mike” Falgout, who modeled the festival after large crawfish boils hosted by his family. 
 
 Falgout did not return messages left about the incident. 
 
 New Orleanians who have attended T-Bois describe it as a relaxed event run largely by local volunteers. Two small stages mostly feature acts who play some variation on the blues; it is closed out each year by New Orleans guitarist Anders Osborne. 
 
 Children and families often mill through the grounds, and many people camp there overnight. The capacity is limited to 1,200, and motorized vehicles are prohibited. 
 
 An area of the site, the Burning Village, is reserved as an arts village modeled after Burning Man. Each year, participants like Stavis create special, often large-scale art, including a giant sculpture that is burned during the last night of the festival in a controlled fire watched by local firefighters. This year’s sculpture was of a 30-foot alligator wielding a guitar. 
 
 Stavis’ brother, Erick Yingling, recently visited her in New Orleans. He said his sister had created a broad, de facto family that went beyond actual kin to include “musicians and misfits, entrepreneurs and artists, community activists and attorneys.” 
 
 Now, he said, that entire community was devastated by its sudden loss. “Jacqui was our heart,” he said. 
 
 “Jacqui will be missed by many, many people, because she got along with everyone. I can’t tell you how much we’ll miss her,” said her grandmother, Barbara Rushmore, 91, of Provincetown, who said she sent love to the two women who were injured in the incident. She expressed hope that her granddaughter would be buried within visiting range of her, perhaps in the cemetery that edges the family home in Provincetown. ||||| Deputies got a call around 10:00 p.m. on Friday that three people had been hurt in a lightning strike. 
 
 When they arrived, they found Stavis was unresponsive. Her two companions, both women, were suffering from electric shock injuries. 
 
 The department didn’t identify the two other women, but said one was 30 and one was 24. 
 
 The Labrador was also killed in the strike, according to authorities.
– When the weather got bad at Louisiana's T-Bois Blues Festival on Friday night, Jacqui Stavis, two other women, and a Labrador retriever sought shelter in a small tent. But tragedy struck when lightning hit the tent, killing the 28-year-old and the dog and injuring the other two women, the Lafourche Parish Sheriff's Office says in a statement picked up by BuzzFeed. The other two women, ages 30 and 24 and also from New Orleans like Stavis, were hospitalized with "injuries commonly associated with electric shock." Stavis, who grew up in New England, New York, and Wisconsin, had always been fascinated by New Orleans, and moved there in 2009, friends tell the Advocate. "She just dove into the culture of New Orleans, just became a part of it," one friend says. "The Falgout Family is deeply saddened by the tragic event that occurred this weekend at T-Bois Blues Festival," festival organizers posted on Facebook Sunday. (The festival is held on an alligator and crawfish farm owned by the Falgout family, and "Alligator Mike" Falgout produces the festival.) "Every attendee of this small festival is part of the T-Bois family, and we feel as though we lost a family member this weekend. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Stavis family and all those who love Jacqui." Another post on the page notes that Stavis changed her cover photo to a scene from the festival (it appears to be from a past year's festival) while she was in attendance this year. NOLA.com rounds up other Facebook tributes to Stavis, who worked as a massage therapist.