Lightning bolt hits Albion Park man who lives to tell the tale

Almost 20,000 lightning bolts were recorded during the wild afternoon storm that struck the Illawarra on Monday, August 28.

In Albion Park, there was so much rain that leaves had blocked the gutters of a pergola covering Mr McBride's back deck.

Water was running backwards towards the house and cascading through cracks onto his beer fridge.

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The humble 49-year-old Sawtell Street resident rushed to pull out the leaves.

He climbed a metal stepladder, lent one arm on the Colorbond boundary fence to balance himself, and with the other started clearing the blockage out of the metal gutter.

That's when a lightning bolt stuck the fence he was leaning on.

"A lightning bolt landed really close and I got an electric shock between the house and the fence," Mr McBride said.

"It lit up the whole area."

The pain was excruciating and instant.

"The arms just went totally limp, the fingers went limp. It was just like hitting your funny bone 10 times over, hard," Mr McBride said.

One of his feet was on the plastic top step of the ladder, the other on the wooden retaining wall alongside the fence. He didn't fall though.

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He joked to the Mercury that he had his "trusty safety thongs on": a pair of rubber thongs.

"By the time I got off the ladder I got the feeling back in my hands," he said.

"I was just walking inside, then my phone messaged and the neighbour said 'oh, gee, that was close' and I said 'yeah, I've just been hit by it.'."

His partner Ursula Vasquez was standing beside him when it happened, holding the bucket he was putting leaves in.

"All I saw was this massive bright light and his hands went up in the air," she said.

"I knew straight away he'd been hit and I said 'just get inside'. It was very frightening."

Mr McBride said so many "F-bombs" after the lightning strike that his 21-year-old son, who was wearing noise-cancelling headphones while he was gaming inside the home, came running out.

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Paramedics arrived within minutes and he was rushed to Shellharbour Hospital.

There, he had two ECGs to check if his heart had been damaged (it wasn't), blood tests and despite some burning to his arms he was discharged within a few hours.

His burns are unique, with one shaped like a fern - a telltale sign of a lightning strike medicos told him. The other is smaller and has hundreds of red dots.

The burning sensation lasted for four hours, and a day after it all happened he admits he's learnt his lesson.

While he's acquired a few new nicknames from his mates - Flash and Sparkles - among them, the next question everyone's asking is "did you buy a lottery ticket?"

The answer is yes, three.

Earlier this year a 10-year-old boy was left in a critical condition after he was struck by lightning while swimming at Warilla South Beach in Barrack Point on Australia Day.

The so-called "bolt from the blue" caused the boy's heart to go into cardiac arrest and his breathing to stop, and a Good Samaritan delivered mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

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