BOWEN ISLAND, B.C. -- On a stormy August night, Jane Misener woke to the sound of her husband shrieking in pain. She ran out of her Bowen Island home and found him lying on the ground.
"He was just screaming, screaming in pain," she said. "He was just hanging onto his legs and hyperventilating. He went into shock immediately."
Only moments earlier, Cal Misener was woken up by a severe thunderstorm. He was lying in bed beside his wife, worried he’d left his truck’s door open. So he threw on his camouflage Crocs, and went outside in his PJs.
“I reached in to turn on the ignition, and just as I had done that, bam!” he told CTV News with amazement in his eyes. "There was no warning, the thunder and the lightning hit at the very same time."
He believes he or his truck was struck by lightning.
"The feeling is like this intensity that I've never felt before...my legs just felt like they had been blown apart,” said Misener.
“I saw the whole underside of the truck and the road itself, turn this bright orange colour.”
The jolt threw him three metres from the Ford and blew his Crocs off his feet.
“He was really struggling to get up,” said his wife. “I got him into the bedroom, put icepacks on his legs because they were just hot and buzzing.”
Paramedics checked his vitals several times and encouraged him to go to the hospital. But Misener, 50, felt well enough and declined.
When the bolt hit, he was was still wearing the camo Crocs. Misener had one foot on the vehicle’s running board and the other foot on the ground.
Scientists believe rubber shoes offer little meaningful protection from lightning strikes. But the couple is sure glad he had them on.
"I believe they saved my life” said Cal Misener sincerely. "I believe at the very least they mitigated the circumstances. The damage could have been much worse."
His wife agrees he was lucky.
"That could have gone in a different way," she said tearing up. "He's happy, he's healthy and I’m just going to count my blessings."
