GLENDALE

Glendale men live to joke about lightning strike

Emily L. Mahoney
The Republic| azcentral.com
Thomas Mendoza, 31, left, stands next to Carlos Mungia, 17, in Maricopa Inegrated Heatlh System Tuesday morning following getting struck by lightning on Monday.

Being struck by lightning and surviving to tell the tale likely ranks rock-bottom on the lists of events anyone expects to experience.

But two Glendale landscapers remember their brush with lightning as both catastrophic and spectacular — and with more than a little bit of humor.

Thomas Mendoza, 31, and Carlos Mungia, 17, were repairing a sprinkler head in a yard near Seventh Street and Bethany Home Road in Phoenix at about 5:30 a.m. Monday when a small but powerful storm cell moved through the Valley from the west.

The pair were standing in a puddle in the front yard, packing up to leave, when they heard a loud bang similar to shotgun blasts and saw a blinding flash.

Mendoza was flung nearly 10 feet into a palm tree. Mungia was tossed into the side of a truck parked nearby. Both men had received more than a million volts of energy.

"I woke up on the ground and didn't really know what was going on; I felt light-headed and I looked at Carlos, and I see him grabbing his head," Mendoza said. "(My) first reaction is I tried to get up, and I couldn't feel anything from the waist down."

Mendoza and Mungia were rushed to the Arizona Burn Center at Maricopa Integrated Health System by a co-worker. Medical professionals thought they'd been in a car accident.

"I told them I got hit by lightning, and they thought I meant a Ford Lightning," Mendoza said. "They thought I got hit by a truck."

But once they set the record straight, "that changed the whole perspective in the hospital," Mendoza said, and the hospital called all available staff to the trauma treatment area.

Dr. Daniel Caruso, a burn and trauma surgeon, said the center sees only one to two lightning injuries per year, and those who survive are lucky.

"You're talking about a million volts plus, which is such an unbelievable amount of energy," Caruso said, noting that power lines in major cities usually carry about 100,000 volts.

About 600,000 lightning strikes occur in Arizona each year. The odds of being struck in one's lifetime are about one in 12,000, the National Weather Service says.

Eight people were killed by lightning strikes in Arizona from 2002 through 2011, and this year a 24-year-old woman was killed and several people were injured when their group was caught on the Mogollon Rim during a late June storm.

The outlook for Mendoza on Monday was dire.

For the first seven hours, Mendoza was paralyzed from the waist down, he said. He also sustained first-degree burns along his left side. Mungia had a head injury after his head slammed the truck.

Mendoza said his body temperature was so high after the strike his sheets had to be changed six times in the first four hours because of his sweat. Doctors performed tests on his legs to check for feeling, and when they discovered he was paralyzed, they feared he could have broken his back, he said.

"Hearing that I was paralyzed, that's a life-changer," Mendoza said. "I'm only 31. I've got three kids. I've still got a lot of life to live left."

A few hours later, the situation changed.

"I was laying in the bed and saw the blanket twitch near my feet," he said. "I started pressing all the buttons so I could get a hold of the doctors, and they ran to me."

Caruso theorized that the lightning struck the ground of a nearby tree and traveled through the earth to the puddle where the men were standing. He said Mendoza's nervous system below the waist likely was stunned by the electricity, and had to recuperate before he could regain feeling.

"It's like throwing a breaker, like it got overloaded," he said. "As it calms down, you can flip the switch and turn it goes back on."

At 10 a.m. Tuesday, Mendoza took his first walk since the incident and is now expected to make a full recovery, along with Mungia.

"Lightning is quicker than the eye," he said. "It's amazing how quickly your life can turn. People take things for granted ... but all it takes is being in the wrong place at the wrong time and it can happen to anybody. You have to always watch out for your surroundings, and I never said that before."

Mendoza said he hopes people will educate themselves about the dangers of lightning. He said he thinks the rarity of rain in the state makes people more likely to want to be outside during storms.

"When you're a kid and you get rain, you're out the door, riding your bike, climbing trees, playing in the mud; now I think I'm going to second guess that and keep my son inside when it rains," he said, laughing.

Mendoza's wife, Eliza Rodriguez-Mendoza, 31, said the incident was extremely scary.

"I feel a big sigh of relief and happiness," she said. "We could have been out looking for funeral homes and a place to bury (them)."

Mendoza and Mungia said they plan on getting matching lightning-bolt tattoos and are both eager to resume their normal lives, albeit with a bit more appreciation.

"I've gotten a lot of requests for lottery numbers," Mendoza said with a grin. "I'm taking the highest bid."