A 15-year-old boy was relaxing in his bed when a flash of lightning struck the roof and shot heat and electricity through his entire body, and even lit his bed on fire.
Corey Wilmer was on a family trip to the lake when it happened.
“It still hits me on every once in a while that wow, I got struck by lightning,” Corey says.
He was lying awake on his bed as the storm passed overnight when the lightning bolt hit the roof of his bunkhouse, setting a charge through the wall, his bed and him.
Corey describes what it felt like.
“The most odd burning sensation through my whole body and the lightning itself lifted me off my bed,” he said. “And I looked at my bed and it was on fire.”
After dousing it with water he ran into the cabin and found his stepdad, Edwin Griego, who woke up from the bolt’s explosive sound.
Griego describes what happened:
“Then Cory came in and said ‘I just got struck by lightning’ and I’m like ‘no, you didn’t.’ And he was like ‘I had to put out a fire with the water bottle. I’m like OK I better go check that out. And then he took off his shirt. And then I saw the the spider marks on his left shoulder. I’m a paramedic and you only see that in textbooks.”
Worried about his heart, Corey spent half a day in the hospital.
The bunk house had its own scars: A blown out window a hole in the roof and cracked siding.
“And then we had debris that was blown out past the cars,” Griego said.
Although shaken up, Corey is thankful the cabin was able to absorb at least some of the lightning strike.
“I’m just happy I didn’t get the entire strike because the doctors were saying if I would have got the whole bolt this could have been a completely different story.”