Two men were injured July 17 when lightning struck at a campground in Egmont.
RCMP and the Egmont Fire Department told Coast Reporter the call came in around 7:30 p.m. as a storm rolled through the Sunshine Coast.
Fire Chief Kal Helyar said the men were sitting at a picnic table outside a cabin at Strongwater Camping and Cabins on Egmont Road when a bolt of lightning struck one of them, and knocked the other to the ground.
Raven Ramsay-Caddell, who works at the family-owned campsite, said he was sitting on the porch of their house talking to his mother when they heard a “generous boom, and everything went white.”
Moments later a man from one of the campsites told them he thought his brother had just been hit by lightning.
Helyar said when firefighters and BC Ambulance crews got there they found the man had burns and “visible entry and exit wounds.”
Both Helyar and Ramsay-Caddell noticed that one of his socks had caught fire.
The man was taken by ambulance crews to Sechelt Hospital then airlifted to Vancouver General Hospital to be checked over. He was released shortly afterward. The other man was examined by paramedics at the scene.
Helyar said there was no damage to the campground, and because of the wet conditions the lightning didn’t cause any fire.
“It’s kind of a wake-up call,” Helyar added.
“If you have a severe lightning storm overhead, being indoors is better [than being out in the open].”
The Sunshine Coast Golf and Country Club, meanwhile, suffered some damage when lightning struck nearby during the same storm. Club pro Jim Pringle says the lightning caused a major power surge, which damaged the sprinkler systems and the electric charging stations for the golf carts as well as some of the carts.
