+ A
A -
NYT Syndicate
It was a drizzly, dark January morning, but James Church grabbed his fishing pole and tackle box anyway, hopped in his Jeep and headed for the jetty, eager to get in some fishing as an antidote to a hard week of work.
Wearing his brown rubber waders and a yellow rain jacket to keep out the 6 am cold, Church, 55, cast back his pole and let loose the line and sinker. He saw lightning on the horizon far away and felt safe. Then a bolt struck. He remembers a deafening boom and a flash so bright he felt his eyes burn. He woke up against a metal railing 6 feet away. Lying on his back, alone, in the dark, his body felt paralysed. He knew he had to reach his cellphone to get help, but it was locked in the tackle box.
"My will to survive kicked in," Church said."I needed to get moving instead of just lying there."
Electric hotbed
In a state that counts alligators, sharks and hurricanes among its many dangers, add lightning. Florida has more lightning than any other state in the country (20.8 strikes per square mile) and the most people who die from lightning (54 since 2007 ” more than double that of the next state, Texas), according to the National Weather Service. This year, four people have died from lightning ” two construction workers, a camper and the baby of a pregnant mother who was seriously harmed by a bolt; many more have been injured.
Lightning's fondness for Florida stems from its location, climate (hot and humid) and topography: A peninsula, it stretches between two warm bodies of water, the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. This produces hot, wet air ” a sea breeze ” that rises over land.
"We have the best place in the country for thunderstorms," said Martin A. Uman, a distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Florida and the author of The Art and Science of Lightning Protection.""It takes rising, hot, moist air to make thunderstorms."
Unlike other states, Florida has all-season thunderstorms, which peak during summer. And it has an outsize number of year-round boaters, beachgoers, fishing enthusiasts and golfers ” human lightning rods in wide, flat, open spaces. Lightning likes to strike the tallest thing around. Sometimes it's a tree. Sometimes it's a human.
While the odds of being hit are extremely low, lightning is unpredictable. It can lurk far from where you think danger lives. Floridians are trained to listen for thunder. The savvier among us know to count the seconds between seeing lightning and hearing a rumble (for every five seconds, the lightning is 1 mile away). But lightning defies those expectations. It can strike 10 miles away from a cloud.
A lucky strike
Church said he couldn't hear any thunder from the jetty. It was drizzling. And yet he got hit ” hard. As he lay on his back in the dark on January 7, Church, a martial arts teacher, tried to move but couldn't ” a common reaction to lightning. It short-circuits your body. After a time, he flipped himself onto his stomach but couldn't get up. He felt a surge of liquid pour out of his belly. Blood.
Then he slowly crawled to his tackle box and tried to open it. That's when he noticed two of his fingers ” the right ring finger and pinkie ” were almost entirely gone. He used his thumbs to snap it open, grabbed his phone and called 911.
"I just got hit by lightning," he told the 911 operator."I lost two fingers. They are completely gone," he added later between moans."Everything is starting to hurt a little bit now."
Church was lucky: the lightning missed his heart. Most people hit by lightning die because their hearts stop. But it still left lasting damage. The lightning hit his fishing pole and exploded the metal sinker toward his face. Because he was resting the pole near his right hip, the force of the lightning shoved it into his stomach. His elbow had been against his hip so the current travelled there and along his forearm. It left his body through his two fingers.
He spent nine hours in surgery. Doctors cut open his stomach and took out half of his small and large intestines, which had been burned and damaged. Then they sewed up his fingers. His stomach, arm and wrist still have burn marks. His rain jacket was shredded. His eardrums had burst.
Six months later, he said he made it a point to enjoy life just a little more, even though, with no insurance, he is still paying his medical bills, and storms can easily spook him. He takes weekends off, and hangs with his grandchildren."I just pay attention to life more," he said.
A weatherman's report
Brad Sussman's lightning bolt was forged in irony."I knew everything about lightning," he said. That's because he was chief meteorologist at a Jacksonville station and sat on the county's lightning safety board back then, in the early 1990s.
One afternoon, rain was pounding his house and Sussman saw an open window on the screened porch. He walked over to the metal window frame and put his right hand on it. Next thing he knew, he was flat on his back 18 feet away.
"My 2 1/2-year-old son says, 'Daddy, that was funny. Do that again,'" said Sussman, who now sells insurance in Cleveland. Sussman was speechless; he literally couldn't talk. A neighbour heard the boom and walked into the house."How could I be struck by lightning?" Sussman told him."I'm a meteorologist."
The evidence was on the porch roof: a burned hole. The lightning had travelled across to the window frame. Sussman walked away with only a small burn on his right shoulder blade, a loopy feeling for a couple of hours and more respect for lightning."When lightning strikes nearby," he said,"wow, do I get scared."
