A trucker says he’s lucky to be alive, and happy to still be trucking, after being struck by lightning.
The incident happened during the recent storms in Newton, Texas while trucker Dale Dean was going about his work day hauling timber.
Dean was working to haul timber during a storm when his truck got stuck in the mud. Dean says he was hooking his truck up to a skidder to help pull it out of the mud when lightning struck his rig. The current of electricity then traveled through the metal chain and into Dean’s body, knocking him three feet into a nearby ditch.
“It was a real scary moment for me,” Dean said to ABC 13. “All that flashed through my mind was, ‘Man, you’re not going to be able to do this no more.’ Like, man – I kind of tear up when I talk about it like that.”
Dean’s coworker then called their supervisor while Dean called his wife for help getting to the hospital.
“‘Beverly I-‘ and she said, ‘Let me call you right back.’ And I quickly looked at my coworker and said, ‘Oh my goodness, I’m about to die and she just said she’s gonna call me back,” Dean joked.
When Dean walked into the hospital, he says doctors were stunned – they said the lightning through his body should have caused him to have a heart attack.
“I guess the first thing I didn’t know was if he was dead or alive. So, proud to see him standing up when I got there,” William Tyson, Dean’s supervisor, said.
“On our way home from the hospital, I reached over, and I grabbed his hand, and I thought, ‘If it would’ve been different, I would have been coming home by myself.’ And I’m just grateful that I was able to reach over and grab his hand,” Dean’s wife said.