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Professor dies from lightning injuries
By LINDA GIBSON
© St. Petersburg Times, TAMPA -- Richard Stessel often warned his University of South Florida engineering students about the dangers of lightning. Stay away from trees during a thunderstorm, he'd tell them. Don't even go out if you can help it. Saturday, students gathered at University Community Hospital to mourn and mark the bitter irony of his death from a lightning strike on Friday. He died Saturday without regaining consciousness. He was 44. "He was very aware of lightning issues. He was always warning us," said 33-year-old Maysson Sallam, a Ph.D. candidate from Jordan who worked closely with Stessel. Sallam had been waiting for Stessel at the engineering laboratory Friday afternoon for a 4 p.m. appointment. Knowing a storm was approaching and that Stessel didn't have his car on campus, Sallam tried calling him to offer a ride to the lab. She couldn't find him. When he didn't arrive at the lab, she called his office and his home looking for him. She didn't learn until later that he had been struck under a group of oak trees just steps away from his laboratory. When campus police officers and paramedics got to Stessel just after 4 p.m. Friday, he was unconscious, his face bloodied and his clothing charred. He had no pulse. Doctors at the hospital were able to get his pulse back. Ten of them worked for hours trying to save him, including a radiologist, a neurosurgeon, a general surgeon, a cardiologist, a pulmonary specialist, a neurologist, a facial reconstructive surgeon and three emergency room doctors, said hospital spokeswoman Nancy Johnson-Ryan. He was put on a ventilator and survived the night. But doctors had trouble maintaining his blood pressure, which collapsed altogether Saturday. That is what caused his death, Johnson-Ryan said. Staffers from LifeLink, Tampa's organ donation organization, determined that Stessel's organs had been too damaged by the lightning to be salvaged. Stessel and his wife, Susan, recently bought a house and were busy renovating it. Because of Stessel's allergies, they had all the carpeting replaced with wood floors. "We were looking forward to having them as neighbors," said Robert Bass, who lives across the street from the house. "They seemed very intelligent." Sallam and two other students described Stessel as an exceptional professor and kind man who took a great deal of time and interest in them. "He was really encouraging," said 29-year-old Silvana Ghiu, a Ph.D. candidate from Romania. "If I was upset with my research, he'd tell me I was doing a great job." Dorothee Turbeau, a 23-year-old student from Ecole Centrale de Nantes in France, had just finished a summer internship with Stessel. She canceled her flight home to stay for his funeral. Crying and trembling, she recalled how he would gently lecture her about failing to wear her bicycle helmet. Stessel was an avid cyclist who planned to bicycle from his new home to campus and back. The storm that spawned the fatal bolt Friday was no worse than the typical summer storm, according to the National Weather Service, but lightning from it was unusually destructive. Strikes hit one other person and started a fire. Adam McQueen of Brandon was struck about 4:45 p.m. Friday and taken to Tampa General Hospital. He was released Saturday. Lightning also struck some apartment buildings under construction in Brandon at Lumsden and Providence roads. It started a fire that burned the roof, attic and third floor of one building. In addition to his wife, Susan, Stessel is survived by his parents, Paul and Edith Stessel of Chapel Hill, N.C. - Staff writer Susan Thurston contributed to this report.
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