People struck by lightning advise caution
Two describe experiences for awareness week
By Bobbi Mlynar
Monday, June 25, 2007
Lightning doesn’t have to strike twice to convince Leah Hegenbart Barr and Chip Hammond to take cover during thunderstorms. Both have been victims of nearby lightning strikes and neither wants an encore.
Both talked about their experiences last week as the National Weather Service prepared for its 2007 Lightning Safety Awareness Week, which runs today through Saturday.
The campaign is particularly important in Kansas, according to Jennifer Stark, NWS warning coordination meteorologist in Topeka.
While the state ranks 33rd in the nation for the number of deaths caused by lightning, Kansas ranks second in the nation for the number of lightning damage reports.
Lightning receives little attention, Stark said, because it usually claims only one or two victims at a time, unlike the mass destruction of tornados and hurricanes. The majority of undocumented injuries caused by lightning likely is far greater than statistics reflect.
Former Emporian Leah Hegenbart Barr, now of Atlanta, received an indirect hit while leaving work in Atlanta in 1992. Barr was carrying an umbrella as she walked across the water-puddled parking lot to her car.
“I heard the clap of thunder and it was like all of a sudden everything went white,” Barr said. “It wasn’t seeing white the way you do if there’s a big flash bulb in your face. It was literally just like suddenly there was no vision at all.”
The tip of her umbrella audibly popped and flew off.
“We think (lightning) probably hit the building and traveled through the water, and I had sort of the end result from it,” Barr said. “The people standing near the building were actually knocked back. There was a major force there, and I just got it through the water and through my feet.”
Barr realized she was too shaken-up to drive and called her husband, who worked in the same office complex, to drive her home. The lightning caused minor burns on her feet, which she believed then to be the extent of her injuries. Barr said she went to bed early and, the following morning, went back to work.
“I didn’t think about anything being wrong until I sat down and picked up a piece of paper out of my inbox,” Barr said. “The words on the page were swimming. I was really not able to digest a sentence at all.”
She went to a doctor to be checked, and learned that her heart, lungs, and vital signs were fine. The doctor asked her simple questions — name, birthday, day of the week, address — that she had no trouble answering.
“Then he said, ‘Who is the president of the United States?’ And I thought for a minute, and I thought for another minute.”
Eventually, her brain filtered the answer out: “George Bush.”
“Immediately I said, ‘That took too long, didn’t it?’ And he said, ‘Yes, it did.’”
The doctor referred her to a neurologist who told her to stay home from work. He likened the brain injury she had sustained to a badly sprained ankle.
“You’ve sprained your brain and you have to stay off of it,” Barr recalled him saying.
“I had very poor information retrieval for a long time,” she said. “I felt like my brain was a file cabinet — that someone had come in and dumped all of the files on the floor. ... It was not a very good feeling to not have any faculties of recall and to be so slow-witted.”
The damage healed slowly and Barr improved, though it was close to a year before she felt she was functioning well.
The lightning strike brought an unexpected side effect.
“I was very calm and serene,” she said. “I had a tremendous sense of well-being and serenity.”
The doctor compared it to the electric shock treatments given decades ago to calm mental patients. The lightning had given Barr a similar effect and, while pleasant, it is not one she wants to repeat.
“It certainly has changed my behavior in terms of the respect that I give a lightning storm,” Barr said. “I don’t take any chances.
That day, all she was thinking about was getting home; she didn’t mind getting wet from the rain.
“It was just a rainstorm and I didn’t think about lightning,” Barr said. “I certainly do now.”
Chip Hammond of rural Olpe, who runs about 7,000 head of cattle in the Flint Hills, has had enough close calls to give him a healthy respect for lightning.
He and another man took cover under a gooseneck trailer when they were caught during a thunderstorm while loading trucks in a pasture. Lightning struck the trailer or nearby.
It came up through the trailer and shocked us,” Hammond said. “Kind of zapped us like a hot wire.”
His next encounter also came in a pasture, as he was riding for cover. In that area of the Flint Hills, shelter often can be far away.
“Everything turned red and my mare went down,” Hammond said. “I don’t think it hit us, but I think it hit close enough that it kind of stunned her, or scared her and she slipped and went down. It’s nothing to mess with out here.”
Livestock are at-risk during thunderstorms, he said. Last year, he lost a cow to lightning, and a mare and colt before that.
“We’ve had 20 or so killed at one time, standing at a barbed wire fence,” he said. “Lightning went down the fence and killed them all right there.”
He estimated the loss of a full-grown cow would be about $1,500; yearlings would be $700 to $800.
“You won’t hardly ever see a spot where it’s burned. There’s no hair ever smoked or anything,” he said. “... but where it goes out, it’ll knock the hooves off sometimes. I’ve heard people say it’ll blow their eyeballs out, but I’ve never seen it.”
Other ranchers have experienced similar incidents.
“They do have lightning insurance,” Hammond said. “Most guys carry it. I know I carry it on my cows.
“It doesn’t happen every storm, but you get cattle strung out through here and they’re the highest thing out on that hill, the lightning’s going to hit them. ... It’s Mother Nature.”