In the lightning capital of North America, a St. Petersburg photographer withstands a hit.
Six years ago, a blast of lightning struck Mike Pease powerfully enough to knock him off his feet and send him flying through the air. But the St. Petersburg Times photographer was on a deserted country road, miles from help. He figured it would take longer for paramedics to reach him than it would take to drive himself to the hospital. So he got up, checked his pulse, got in his car and drove away.
But Pease, now 68, exhibits no lasting ill effects. It’s just “dumb luck,” he says, that he has no burns or scars — that he not only survived the strike but that it left no visible mark. Although Pease spent his career chasing storms across the countryside and has stood surrounded by lightning with his hair on end, his fierce encounter left him with only fleeting, concussion-like signs.
Nationally, nearly 350 people report being struck by lightning each year; the National Weather Service estimates another 200 are struck but fail report it. Another 60 people a year, on average, are killed by strikes. In the Tampa Bay area, which is called the lightning capital of North America, there are about 30 reported injuries and 20 deaths a year.
Those who survive lightning strikes often suffer lifelong effects, including memory loss, chronic pain, anxiety, irritability and dramatic personality changes.
Pease was on assignment that summer day in 2002, looking for a photograph of the day’s storm — preferably of lightning. He doesn’t remember the date, but says it was a Friday afternoon. He heard faint rumblings, far off, occasionally, but didn’t see any lightning. Walking down a meandering asphalt road — an idyllic back road that he often drove as a shortcut home — he was hoping to find that defining photograph, the one framed by trees dripping rain, set against a stormy summer sky.
“Of course everything was wet,” he says. The road was heavy from a recent downpour and Pease was slopping through a few inches of standing water.
He thinks the lightning struck the road about 30 feet in front of him and traveled through the water to where he stood. “The crack was so loud it was blinding,” he says. “It was like being hit by a big 4-by-8 sheet of plywood going about 40 mph.”
The strike threw him into the open back hatch of his Jeep. After climbing out and walking around to the driver’s seat, the former Air Force medic ran through a quick self-evaluation. “I was sweating; my heart was racing; I was breathing real hard. I guess I was scared,” he says. He had a blinding headache and felt queasy. He thought he might be in shock.
The 10 to 20 million volts of electricity carried in a strike can stop a person’s heart and breathing, says Dr. Nelson Hendler, a lightning researcher and retired clinical director of the Mensana Pain Clinic in Stevenson, Md. But the immediate effects of lightning strikes — intense headaches, ringing in the ears, nausea and dizziness — are often just the beginning. Symptoms might not surface for weeks or months, Hendler says.
Survivors frequently experience difficulty with short-term memory, coding new information and multitasking, says Dr. Mary Ann Cooper, a professor of emergency medical care at the University of Illinois at Chicago who specializes in lightning strike treatment. “It’s almost like adult Attention Deficit Syndrome,” she says. They might also suffer from an irregular heartbeat, mysterious body aches and depression. Many lightning strike victims meet in support groups and at annual conferences to share their stories and frustrations.
Cooper thinks whether or not survivors experience lasting effects may depend on the level of energy carried by the lightning strike. Direct hits might be more likely to cause long-term damage, she says, than strikes that hit the ground or a nearby object, as in Pease’s case.
Hendler disagrees, though, and says there is no way to guess who may be affected or to what extent. “There’s absolutely no way to predict whose heart is going to stop and who is going to get away lucky,” he says. “It’s completely capricious. The answer is, we don’t have an answer.”
After being struck, Pease first drove himself to a nearby fire station, but found it unmanned. There weren’t any paramedics at the second station he stopped at, either. At that point, he decided to make the 20-minute drive to the hospital. Following a two-day stay in the intensive care unit under observation, he didn’t feel the need to seek further medical attention. He didn’t even tell his family doctor about the accident. Nor did he join any of the survivor support groups. He says those are for people whose experience was life-altering.
The strike may have mildly affected Pease’s short-term memory during the first year after his accident. “I’d be talking and I’d kind of just ... I’d say, ‘What were we talking about?’ I’d forget mid-sentence,” he says. But he and his wife, Monique, say they can’t blame that entirely on the lightning. “He’s always been forgetful in general,” Monique says.
For all his luck at surviving the strike with no apparent injuries, Pease does note other lingering effects. He doesn’t chase storms anymore, looking for that perfect photograph. He doesn’t take that idyllic back road so often anymore. He’s a little more cautious — but not much, Monique says.
These days, when he sees a storm coming, he still watches the sky. But now he watches from his porch. And as the storm moves closer, Pease moves closer to the door.
“To this day, I have to remind myself, ‘Ah, why don’t you just go inside?’ ” he says. “ ‘This ain’t worth it.’ ”