DIXFIELD – A bolt of lightning struck a ball field here Wednesday night, sending electrical current through many of the approximately 50 youths and adults assembled for a baseball game and blowing a hole through a nearby building, officials said.

It was instantly followed by an explosive crack of thunder that made everyone jump. In the following minutes, a steady stream of siren wails sounded from multiple emergency vehicles headed to the ball field at Marble Park on Coburn Avenue.

Shortly before 5:11 p.m., under blackening skies, people standing outside the Dixfield town office waiting for a selectmen’s executive session to end saw a bolt of lightning rip laterally through the sky.

At 5:18 p.m., Selectman Brad Dyer rushed out of the meeting headed for the park after receiving a call saying that his 11-year-old son, Bailey Dyer, may have been struck by lightning.

When he arrived, several paramedics, emergency medical technicians and firefighters were checking conditions of people affected by the lightning strike. Dyer’s son appeared to have been the most seriously traumatized.

“My son said he was playing with his friends and all of a sudden, he saw a big explosion right in front of his face, and said he suddenly felt dizzy and his head was pounding,” Brad Dyer said. “It sounds like the lightning struck right in front of them.

“I was hit by lightning,” Bailey Dyer said. “I was hyperventilating and crying after I saw this big explosion. I thought it was a terrorist attack.”

“It felt like somebody dropped a bomb,” said his friend, Zac Berry, 11, of Dixfield. “I saw Bailey on the ground and I said, ‘Oh my God! Bailey’s dead. When it hit me, (the bolt) was yellow. I couldn’t feel anything in my head.”

“When it hit me, it was orange,” said their friend Summer McCollough, 14, of Dixfield. “I think it hit me on top of my head. People had headaches. Several boys on the Dixfield Orange Crush team had headaches.”

“It felt like it hit me in the back of the head and it went right into my chest,” Bailey Dyer’s great aunt, Cyndi Welch said. “I don’t know what hit me but I got it on the back of my head. It was like getting hit in the head by a baseball bat. Now, I just have a headache. A number of us have headaches.”

She was sitting with her back to the blast on the aluminum bleachers with Kari Dwinal of Carthage. Dwinal, who also claimed she was struck in the head, called 911 to report the incident, because the blast blew Welch’s cell phone out of her hand.

“I was sitting right next to her and her cell phone went flying and I put my hand on my head,” Dwinal said.

Her son, Keith Dwinal, an outfielder on the Orange Crush team that was about to play a game with Rumford’s Bowdoin team, said the bolt was half red, half blue.

“It felt like I was hit by a sledgehammer. It was wicked bad,” Keith Dwinal said.

Med-Care Ambulance Director Dean Milligan said that when assistant fire Chief Chris Moretto, who is also Med-Care’s assistant director, radioed that there were between 40 and 50 people affected, Milligan declared the lightning strike a mass casualty incident. He notified several ambulance responders to send help and alerted Rumford Hospital to expect injured people.

Med-Care responded with four ambulances. Ambulances from as far as Bethel, West Paris and Farmington were sent but later canceled.

“We spoke to 40 to 50 people, of whom, 20 to 30 had symptoms that we triaged, but six or seven people we did complete physical exams on and checked for vital signs,” Milligan said.

Aside from headaches and tingling sensations, and hair standing on end due to residual electricity, none of the injuries appeared serious.

According to emergency responders, no one was struck by lighting, but a bolt punctured a nearby shed roof and blew out a small section of the wall at 52 Coburn Ave.

“Whether it was a direct hit by the bolt or a side streak, something did go through that building and came out through the ceiling,” Moretto said after showing the bullet hole-like puncture in the shed’s aluminum roof to fire Chief Scott Dennett.

The baseball game was canceled as a storm followed with heavy downpours and hail.

The storm caused scattered power outages in Androscoggin, Franklin and Oxford counties.