Vasa man zapped by lightning

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VASA TOWNSHIP — Kim Faust figured he’d put away the lawn mower when he saw the sky turning black.

He now feels awful lucky it didn’t become the last undone chore of his life.

The storm picked up dramatically.

That’s when Faust got zapped, feeling electricity run from his head to his feet.

“It was like someone clubbed me on the back of the head,” said Faust.

When he came to, the storm — which produced straight-line winds and a nearby tornado — was raging.

Somehow, Faust had crawled through the yard and was now in the pantry inside his house. From there, he phoned his father and his wife.

“Unbelievable,” he said after the blast, which knocked him off his feet.

He credits his survival to his rubber-soled shoes.

Like many others in the area, Faust’s yard sustained major tree damage, and hail left his shed tattered.

A couple of hours after the apparent lightning strike, Faust, a vintage vehicle restorer, was still shaken by the jolt. He said his arms still felt still hot and his head was still booming and throbbing.

Nearby, a tree that appeared to have taken a direct lightning hit left him wondering whether the zap he felt was a direct hit or an ancillary bolt. Faust is convinced it was lightning that struck him, but he had not discovered any burns on body.

The event didn’t surprise nearby residents.

“The lightning was just unbelievably bad,” Vasa resident Marilyn Montey said.

Apparently, so was the wind.

That mower Faust had been tending to was found more than 300 feet away from where he last saw it.

Faust said that while the shock left his short-term memory spotty, he was beginning to recall more pieces of the event.

Crawling back into the house, he managed to avoid flying debris, some of which pierced his house and deck.

“That’s unreal that I didn’t get impaled by those boards” Faust said.

Tags: news, vasa, lightning