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Ladysmith – A 56-year-old man has been given a second chance at life after his wife and a nurse who had been passing by on a taxi performed CPR on him following a sudden lightning strike.
A couple from Alberton, south of Johannesburg, had been spending their wedding anniversary at a resort in Bergville in the foothills of the Drakensberg mountains in KwaZulu-Natal over the weekend.
The couple had been travelling along a small road when the husband stopped and got out of their car to take a picture of an “amazing cloud with rays of sun burning through it”, paramedics said on Sunday.
“According to the wife, her husband was standing on the driver’s side of the car with the door open. She was busy on her cellphone when she heard an overpowering bang. She immediately looked up and could not see her husband,” said ER24 spokesperson Werner Vermaak.
She said she found her husband lying next to the vehicle unconscious and without a pulse.
He had an extensive burn wound around his neck and left shoulder and his T-shirt had been torn to pieces.
She phoned the resort immediately to call an ambulance to their location, and then started performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation.
A minibus taxi passing by noticed the couple, and stopped to assist the woman. On board was a nurse, who rushed to her aid, Vermaak continued.
Together, the wife and nurse resuscitated the man, while the other passengers on board started singing and praying around the injured man.
The man started breathing again shortly before paramedics arrived and was he was rushed to hospital in Ladysmith.
Bizarrely, he only complained of nausea and not being able to hear anything.
He is currently in a stable condition and undergoing tests, Vermaak added.
