Three construction workers were struck by lightning last night, and suffered non-life threatening injuries. (You can read the story here.)

That’s amazing.

How could you survive a lightning strike with only minor injuries? You can, said Dr. Robert Collier, an emergency room physician at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in Minneapolis who’s seen his share of lightning strike victims.

First a refresher on your grade school science class. Electricity builds up in a thunder cloud until it is released in one massive discharge in the form of lightning. When it strikes something (or someone) it delivers millions of volts of electricity, but lasts only milliseconds.

“The amount of injury, or burn, you get is a function of time of exposure,” he said. Often, people who are struck by lightning are wet — because they are outside during a thunderstorm. The water on their skin can act as protection.

“Lots of people don’t get burned. There’s something called a flash over,” he said. “The path of least resistance is through the water around them and into the ground. ”

But wet or not, a jolt like that will literally stop a heart. A shock from a household outlet or a power line, which use alternating current, can disrupt the electrical pattern of the heart beat causing the muscle to just quiver.

But the direct current from lightning just brings it to a complete stop. Sometimes the heart will start again on its own. Or some quick bystander who does CPR can keep oxygen moving to the brain until the heart re-starts, he said.

The construction workers at the airport, however, were sitting a car when it was struck. How could they survive? Because, like the water coating the skin of someone struck while standing in the rain, the metal of the car is the path of least resistance. Most likely, he said, the electricity just went around them and into the ground. The one who was hurt may have been touching a metal part of the car or sitting by a window.

Stay tuned. They may yet tell their story. But until they do, do you know someone who was struck by lightning and lived to tell the tale?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 10:49 am and is filed under Uncategorized, lightning strikes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.