STRUCK BY LIGHTNING TWICE... AND I SURVIVED
Eric Brocklebank recounts how he became a statistical sensation and, amazingly, lived to tell the tale
With odds of 960,000 to one, the chances of being struck by lightning are too small to worry about. Being hit twice, then, is virtually impossible.
But that was exactly what happened to Eric Brocklebank and, incredibly, both occurred on the same day.
The air cadet leader had first been brushed by a lightning flash as he stood on a training ground watching young cadets go through their paces, just as a torrential storm broke out.
Then 10 minutes later, as he used metal tongs to take sausages from a pan, another fork of lightning cut through a gap in the tent where he was sheltering and hit the utensil he was holding.
The strike melted the tongs into his hand before searing through his body, blowing holes in his hands and feet while cooking his internal organs in a split second of intense heat.
The fact that Eric, 71, lived to tell the tale is perhaps most remarkable of all.
The former design engineer said: “You worry about lots of things in life, but getting hit by lightning isn’t one of them. I certainly never thought it would happen to me. I’m not sure how many other people have been hit by lightning twice in the same day, but it was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been through.”
Eric, the chairman of the 303 Squadron Air Cadets based in Worksop, Notts, had taken a group of youngsters to a regional competition at RAF Digby in Lincolnshire in June 2009.
“It was the finale and I was standing on the sidelines of the parade ground. It started to rain so I put my collar up. Seconds later there was this big flash and a lightning bolt whooshed past me and hit the perimeter fence directly behind me.
“I told everyone to run for cover and we got into a minibus. Then everyone was telling me that my face was really red. The lightning had obviously hit me and burned my face.”
Eric decided to take some of the youngsters, including his 14-year-old son Thomas, to the nearby catering tent, where cadets and parents had gathered, to get some food.
He recalled: “I got a load of finger rolls and cut them down the middle and I went to get the frankfurter sausages, which were boiling in a metal saucepan, to put inside.
“Suddenly there was a big flash as a lightning bolt came straight through a tiny gap in the tent. It hit the side of the pan and blew a hole in the top of my hand. I don’t remember anything else.”
The lightning bolt travelled up the metal tongs Eric was holding, before blowing two holes in his left foot and three in his right. Son Thomas, who had been standing next to him, used his cadet first aid training to do CPR on his dad before medics arrived, which probably saved his life.
Eric said: “I just remember feeling excruciating pain then feeling it go away, then come back. I think when the pain going away was me dying, then it coming back was when my son and then the paramedics kept me alive.
“I remember screaming inside myself but nobody could hear me.
“My wife Katie later told me that when the ambulance crews asked her to take my socks off, my feet were boiling hot and steaming.”
Eric was taking to Lincoln County Hospital where he spent seven weeks in a coma before finally coming round. But at the beginning he couldn’t speak, walk or pass water, or see properly.
He said: “Doctors told me my internal organs were shrunken, like a prune, as if they’d been microwaved. They said I would probably need bone marrow treatment in the future because the bones in my legs had got so hot that they’d cooked my marrow.”
Eric, from Nether Langwith, Notts, who coincidentally worked as a microwave engineer for Toshiba, has slowly recovered.
He said: “I feel very lucky to be alive, and to have an amazing wife who has put up with a lot. I suppose I never have to worry about being struck by lightning again, I mean, that could never happen three times, right?”