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Letter to the editor

Don't tell him lightning doesn't strike twice

By STEVE THOMPSON
Published May 5, 2005

SPRING HILL - The first time lightning hit Emory Johnson, it wasn't so bad. The 1986 strike burned the inside of his truck and left him tingling.

Wednesday's bolt was much worse.

Johnson, 54, was working on the air-conditioning system of a four-unit villa under construction in the Heritage Pines subdivision in northern Pasco County. A band of rain passed over the area about 9 a.m., and he gathered his tools to work inside.

He had just stepped to the floor from a fiberglass ladder when lightning hit a 50-foot pine tree just outside a nearby window. The electricity ripped a spiraling swath of bark from the length of the tree, traveled across a pile of metal-coated duct work and shot in through the window.

"There was a loud bang, and it felt like I was burning inside, and I passed out," Johnson recalled later. "When I woke up, I was shaking so bad I couldn't quit."

He could barely control his hands, he said, but he picked up his cell phone and managed to call his supervisor.

Another worker, Eric Sass, was installing a bathtub in the next room.

"It sounded like a cannon went off when it hit the tree," said Sass, 19. "When I heard it, I just dropped."

Sass didn't realize anyone had been hit until he heard the commotion. He went into the room and saw workers sitting Johnson up. Johnson's hands and arms twitched. He spoke with a stutter. Rescue workers loaded him onto a stretcher. They had to knock out two wooden studs from still unfinished walls to wheel him out of the villa, Sass said.

By Wednesday afternoon, Johnson was feeling well enough to pick up the phone next to his bed at Regional Medical Center Bayonet Point.

Doctors and nurses were still doing tests on him, and he said he wasn't sure what they could do to treat him. "They said I'm really lucky I'm not in worse shape than I am," said Johnson, who lives in Tarpon Springs and works for Senica Air Conditioning.

His shoulders were sore, he said, and "my whole body really feels like somebody beat me up." As Johnson spoke with a reporter, he still had the shakes, the stutter - and a sense of humor.

"If you want a milkshake, I can give you one," he said, "but it will only be half full."

The first time lightning struck him, almost two decades ago, Johnson said he was sitting in his truck at the intersection of U.S. 19 and Moog Road in Holiday. The bolt burned the vehicle's seats and fried its electrical system.

"I don't know if it's trying to follow me still or what," he said.

[Last modified May 5, 2005, 01:26:13]