British angler cheats death after his fishing rod is struck by a lightning bolt
Steve Barrett, 54, was fishing with friends at the Carp Zoo fishery in the Loire Valley, France, on Friday, June 13 when lightning struck and split a tree.
The gardener, from Christchurch, Dorset, was blasted off his feet as it 'bounced', zapping his fishing rod.
'I was probably about 10 feet away from the tree,' he said. 'I knew I'd got hit because I could just feel the heat that went through my left side. It paralysed me straight away.'
'It was just masses of pins and needles, I couldn't feel my body at all. It was a really odd sensation.'
He said he was left laying on the bank, fearing he was dead as his friends desperately raced towards him.
Dazed and unable to move, Steve was rushed to hospital suffering with broken ribs, burns, bruising and a hole in his shoulder.
He also suffered injuries from splinters that flew over from the nearby tree.
Mr Barrett is due to make a full recovery and said he felt 'very lucky' that he had not had any after effects.
The angler was fishing with friends in France
He said: 'It was just one strike, it didn't even rain after, it was just one bolt of lightning 'bang'.
'I was fishing on the bank at the time. One of the guys saw the lightning strike but didn't realise it had hit me.'
Mr Barrett said the bolt 'kind of bounced off the tree then hit my fishing rod'.
'It wasn't a direct hit, I probably wouldn't have survived that,' he assessed, adding that he was 'very lucky' to have come away without lasting injuries.
The 54-year-old spent five days in hospital and required multiple stitches for his injuries.
'It was only a second or two [after being hit] before I went unconscious. I thought I was dead. I kind of went through a bit of emotional trauma there.
'My shoulder got hit by those pieces of wood that came from the tree. Couple of inches higher and it would've got me in the neck.
'I feel very lucky. I've not had any after effects of being hit by lightning.'
Fifty-eight people were killed in Britain by lightning strikes over a three decade period.
The average annual risk of being struck and killed was one person in 33 million.
Survivors have reported strange after effects. Carly Electric, as she calls herself, from Queensland, Australia said that after she was struck in December 2023, she was left with an entirely different eye colour.
'When I looked it up online, I discovered it wasn't uncommon for this to happen in people who had been electrocuted,' she said.
Carly's green eyes turned brown after she was struck while filming a storm on her phone.
'I had goosebumps travelling up and down my arms in waves,' she recalled.
'I was covered in sweat, light-headed and almost euphoric.
'Then suddenly, I lost all feeling in my limbs. I couldn't move, not even an inch.'
Carly was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with keraunoparalysis, a rare neurological issue causing temporary paralysis, with her left unable to move for nine hours.
'My speech was still slurred, though they could see how shocked I was,' she said.
After two weeks, she was almost back to her old self, apart from a strange change to her eye colour and an 'overly sensitive' spot on the top of her head.
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