Please read this!
Wanup man hit by lightning
Date Published | July 20, 2006
Steve Gidge and Jordon and Tyler Cole are all smiles after Monday’s experience.
Advertisement
BY TRACEY DUGUAY
“What a rush,” says a 32-year-old Wanup man, who is lucky to be alive after getting zapped by lighting Monday afternoon.
Like many people that day, Steve Gidge watched as the oppressive sizzle of a five-day heatwave was chased away by a powerful storm.
The sky turned black, the wind rapidly picked up, thunder grumbled ominously, rain poured down incessantly and bright streaks of lightning crackled overhead.
Gidge, along with his girlfriend’s two children, Tyler and Jordan Cole, stood in the doorway of his Wanup apartment as the weather wreaked havoc outside. He propped open the aluminum door a few inches with his right arm to get a better look at the storm. His elbow was balanced against the frame, and his right hand was holding onto the door.
Suddenly, Gidge saw a flash of white light, and then felt a painful blow to his arm.
“Soon as it hit me, I knew what happened,” Gidge recalls. “It felt like as if my arm was being held straight out and something, like a sledgehammer, hit it dead on.”
The lightning travelled through the door frame to Gidge’s elbow, and then the current ran down his arm and exited through the tip of his right index finger.
He watched in shock as his damaged arm suddenly curled up towards his chest. “I remember that feeling of my arm going up.”
He adds he was a little worried when he couldn’t move his arm for a few seconds.
Blood spurted out of the exit point at the end of Gidge’s finger.
An electrical current, either from the original strike or from Gidge, also made its way to eight-year-old Jordon’s foot.
“It hurt,” Jordan says. “It was burning and it stung.”
“The whole door was covered with a white light,” Tyler, 11, says. “Then he [Gidge] says, ‘I’m hit, I’m hit’.”
Gidge and Jordon went to a medical clinic to get checked out.
While Jordon was given a “thumbs up,” the clinic referred Gidge to Sudbury Regional Hospital.
He spent the next 18-hours undergoing a series of tests and having his vital signs monitored.
When Gidge was released around 3 pm Tuesday, the only visible sign of his ordeal was a fine red line that travelled up his arm from his elbow, like a scratch that was healing over, and a round cut at the end of his finger.
While his whole body was tingling, like “pins and needles,” right after the hit, the feeling has subsided with the exception of his right arm which still has the sensation running through it.
Emergency room physician Rob Lepage says the first thing they do when a patient is brought in after getting hit by lightning is take care of the ABCs: airway, breathing and circulation.
High voltage lightning strikes can cause a person’s heart to stop and it can also affect breathing, Lepage says.
Other side effects can include a lack of consciousness, paralysis, heart arrhythmia, burns, blown eardrums, internal injuries, and nerve and muscle damage.
The doctor says Gidge was lucky because lightning strikes can be very deadly. His saving grace was that he wasn’t hit directly by the damaging current.
“You’re not going to likely escape if you get a direct hit,” Lepage points out. “Usually if it’s a direct strike, you’re dead or there’s more damage.”
According to the Environment Canada, seven people are killed, and 60 to 70 seriously injured every year in Canada from lightning strikes. A camper died in Killarney last summer after being struck.
In this case, there was a happy ending. Jordon barely took time out from playing basketball for this interview. Gidge returned to work Wednesday and is giving serious thought to buying a lottery ticket or two.
As for Tyler, well, he’s taking the whole thing in stride.
“I’m glad I didn’t get hit,” he says. “And I’m just amazed he survived it because it doesn’t happen that way all the time.”
Think again before playing lottery and think you have more chance to being hit by lightning then win the jackpot at the lottery.
Here is the link: http://www.northernlife.ca/News/Loc...ightningTOP.asp?NLStory=07-21-06-lightningTOP
marcam
P.S:
anyway, who people who wants to win the jackpot but don't spend to much.
Wanup man hit by lightning
Date Published | July 20, 2006
Steve Gidge and Jordon and Tyler Cole are all smiles after Monday’s experience.
Advertisement
BY TRACEY DUGUAY
“What a rush,” says a 32-year-old Wanup man, who is lucky to be alive after getting zapped by lighting Monday afternoon.
Like many people that day, Steve Gidge watched as the oppressive sizzle of a five-day heatwave was chased away by a powerful storm.
The sky turned black, the wind rapidly picked up, thunder grumbled ominously, rain poured down incessantly and bright streaks of lightning crackled overhead.
Gidge, along with his girlfriend’s two children, Tyler and Jordan Cole, stood in the doorway of his Wanup apartment as the weather wreaked havoc outside. He propped open the aluminum door a few inches with his right arm to get a better look at the storm. His elbow was balanced against the frame, and his right hand was holding onto the door.
Suddenly, Gidge saw a flash of white light, and then felt a painful blow to his arm.
“Soon as it hit me, I knew what happened,” Gidge recalls. “It felt like as if my arm was being held straight out and something, like a sledgehammer, hit it dead on.”
The lightning travelled through the door frame to Gidge’s elbow, and then the current ran down his arm and exited through the tip of his right index finger.
He watched in shock as his damaged arm suddenly curled up towards his chest. “I remember that feeling of my arm going up.”
He adds he was a little worried when he couldn’t move his arm for a few seconds.
Blood spurted out of the exit point at the end of Gidge’s finger.
An electrical current, either from the original strike or from Gidge, also made its way to eight-year-old Jordon’s foot.
“It hurt,” Jordan says. “It was burning and it stung.”
“The whole door was covered with a white light,” Tyler, 11, says. “Then he [Gidge] says, ‘I’m hit, I’m hit’.”
Gidge and Jordon went to a medical clinic to get checked out.
While Jordon was given a “thumbs up,” the clinic referred Gidge to Sudbury Regional Hospital.
He spent the next 18-hours undergoing a series of tests and having his vital signs monitored.
When Gidge was released around 3 pm Tuesday, the only visible sign of his ordeal was a fine red line that travelled up his arm from his elbow, like a scratch that was healing over, and a round cut at the end of his finger.
While his whole body was tingling, like “pins and needles,” right after the hit, the feeling has subsided with the exception of his right arm which still has the sensation running through it.
Emergency room physician Rob Lepage says the first thing they do when a patient is brought in after getting hit by lightning is take care of the ABCs: airway, breathing and circulation.
High voltage lightning strikes can cause a person’s heart to stop and it can also affect breathing, Lepage says.
Other side effects can include a lack of consciousness, paralysis, heart arrhythmia, burns, blown eardrums, internal injuries, and nerve and muscle damage.
The doctor says Gidge was lucky because lightning strikes can be very deadly. His saving grace was that he wasn’t hit directly by the damaging current.
“You’re not going to likely escape if you get a direct hit,” Lepage points out. “Usually if it’s a direct strike, you’re dead or there’s more damage.”
According to the Environment Canada, seven people are killed, and 60 to 70 seriously injured every year in Canada from lightning strikes. A camper died in Killarney last summer after being struck.
In this case, there was a happy ending. Jordon barely took time out from playing basketball for this interview. Gidge returned to work Wednesday and is giving serious thought to buying a lottery ticket or two.
As for Tyler, well, he’s taking the whole thing in stride.
“I’m glad I didn’t get hit,” he says. “And I’m just amazed he survived it because it doesn’t happen that way all the time.”
Think again before playing lottery and think you have more chance to being hit by lightning then win the jackpot at the lottery.
Here is the link: http://www.northernlife.ca/News/Loc...ightningTOP.asp?NLStory=07-21-06-lightningTOP
marcam
P.S:
anyway, who people who wants to win the jackpot but don't spend to much.