Lightning strikes greenskeeper on Texas golf course. ‘My hair was basically burning’
.jpg "While James Clark managed to survive a lightning strike to the head, his phone did not.")
People may worry about many things when first starting a new job — but being struck by lightning probably isn’t very high on that list.
Unfortunately for a Texas man, it should have been.
James Clark is at home resting after being struck by lightning at the Henderson Country Club on Wednesday morning, KLTV reported. Clark had been working on the greens on the golf course when he was hit. The bolt entered through his head and came out his left hand and leg, KLTV reported.
“It was about 8:20, 8:30, I had just got done mowing and watering the greens and I heard the thunder coming, so I just shut off the pumps and I was going back inside of my shed just to get under cover,” Clark said to KLTV.
Rusk County Office of Emergency Management was called and reported to the scene.
“I didn’t really feel it when it initially hit me in the head. I smelled it because my hair was basically burning. I got into my shed and I kind of fell out of my work cart, and I went into my pocket to get my keys out because I knew there was nobody there, so I got my keys out and went to my truck and tried to open it, but my key fob was melted,” Clark said.
Henderson Country Club’s Facebook page said that Clark had only been working at the club for two days when the incident happened.
“James is retired from the military after serving 20 years in the Air Force,” the post read. “He has been one of the hardest working employees we have had the privilege of working with at the golf course. We wish him a speedy recovery.”
Clark wasn’t the only one in Texas to have a run-in with a bolt from the blue this week. Justin Howard, a man who was recording a thunderstorm in Atascocita, Texas, was nearly hit when lightning struck a 50-foot tree in his front yard, splitting it in half, KTRK reported.
The chances of being struck by lightning are rare, and those who are hit have a high survival rate, Business Insider reported in 2016. The odds of getting struck are “roughly 1 in 12,000,” and around 500 people are struck by lightning each year, Business Insider said.
This story was originally published August 6, 2020 at 3:43 PM with the headline "Lightning strikes greenskeeper on Texas golf course. ‘My hair was basically burning’."