Lightning sends two lifeguards to hospital

Vernon — Dean Spadevecchia has always liked storms. Loved them really. He and his mother, Lisa, of Glenwood, would basically chase them. Instead of running inside when a storm approached, the two would go outside and watch, amazed by nature’s fury. Dean actually wanted to be a tornado chaser at one time. Not anymore. Spadevecchia and his mother have a new-found respect for those storms. He and his buddy, Michael Card of Hewitt, were hit by lightning last Friday afternoon at Crystal Springs where both are lifeguards. The bolt threw both of them to the ground and left them very shaky in the aftermath. Not to mention some weird sensations that have lingered. “The first storm rolled by,” said Spadevecchia, a criminal justice student at Sussex County Community College. “We saw lightning and got everyone out of the pool.” After about an hour, he said, they saw another storm coming. Umbrellas were being tossed up in the air, people all ran inside and it was very chaotic. “Mike just said to me ‘Where is all the lightning?’ and about 20 seconds later we saw this huge bolt of lightning. We were thrown to the ground.” Spadevecchia said they were very dazed and their feet were smoking. Card’s hand was the first part of his body to hit the pavement and when they came around, that hand was twice the size of his other one. For Spadevecchia it was his knees that hit first. It took him quite some time to recover his balance to get up. Both lost their hearing for a short time. “It was like a cartoon with people’s mouths moving and nothing coming out,” said Spadevecchia. Some of the bartenders came out to make sure the young men were OK and found them rolling around on the ground. Spadevecchia thought he should call his boss, who, not surprisingly, thought he was kidding around. The two went to St. Clare’s Hospital but didn’t want the attention of an ambulance. The emergency room doctors said the young men were very lucky indeed, according to Lisa Spadevecchia. “The doctors said they had a few things in their favor,” she said. “They were soaking wet, which you would think wouldn’t be a good thing, and they were wearing rubber sandals. Because they were wet, the electricity went out through their skin, not just one area of their body.” Lisa Spadevecchia also thought her son was kidding when he called her to tell her the news. He can be a jokester. But she soon realized that it wasn’t his cell phone cutting in and out — it was his speech. He was leaving out all of the articles in his sentences. That was scary for her. He and Card received a clean bill of health from the doctors after some testing, which included an EKG since both had heart palpitations, but they had to be monitored for three days. Spadevecchia returned to work on Saturday but he was a little nervous. “I could feel my chest. It was heavy. I felt odd,” said Spadevecchia. “Maybe it was just nerves or cold feet.” Whatever the case, both Spadevecchia and Card feel pretty lucky after going through this experience. “I’ve never felt invincible like some kids,” said Spadevecchia. “I’m a pretty cautious driver and all. I feel really lucky.”