Audrius Kirvelaitis didn't hear thunder. He didn't even feel the lightning bolt that struck him as he began walking away from a tree near Washington, D.C.'s Lincoln Memorial late Thursday afternoon.
He only recalls feeling as if he had slipped into a dream.
"I kept telling myself that I have to snap out of this or I'm going to die," he said.
Del Quentin Wilber's story in today's Washington Post gives you a real feeling for what it might be like.
Greg Romano of the National Weather Service gives perhaps the most useful single tip of all: "When you hear thunder, you need to be indoors."
Here's the story:
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A Cherished Father's Day For Lightning-Bolt Victim
Virginia Man Recalls Dreamlike Moment on Mall
Audrius Kirvelaitis didn't hear thunder. He didn't even feel the lightning bolt that struck him as he began walking away from a tree near the Lincoln Memorial late Thursday afternoon.
He only recalls feeling as if he had slipped into a dream.
"I kept telling myself that I have to snap out of this or I'm going to die," said Kirvelaitis, 39, a State Department lawyer from South Riding and the father of 2-month-old twins.
About 20 minutes after being hit in the hip by the sudden bolt, Kirvelaitis awoke in an ambulance racing for George Washington University Hospital.
In a telephone interview yesterday from his hospital room, he talked about his brush with death and said he is expected to make a full recovery.
Kirvelaitis is one of hundreds of people in the United States who are struck by lightning every year.
Nearly 70 people nationwide die annually from lightning strikes, according to the National Weather Service.
Weather officials warned the public to be vigilant and take basic safety precautions now that thunderstorm season has begun.
"Our basic message is that if you hear thunder, you need to be indoors," said Greg Romano, a spokesman for the Weather Service.
Article comments
1 - CW Fisher
Joe, you're the coolest. Last week I went walking in the cornfields and got caught in a thunderstorm. Lightnining all around. Rain pounding. Me laying on the ground. But I didn't dream.
2 - mnight
"Audrius Kirvelaitis didn't hear thunder. He didn't even feel the lightning bolt that struck him"
"When you hear thunder, you need to be indoors."
Brilliant advice. you hear the thunder AFTER the lightning has struck
3 - Igor
mnight: in a storm lightning and thunder appear in sequences, so thunder presages a sudden lightning stroke. When you hear thunder you are in deep doo-doo.