Thomas Fahmy, a staffer in Rep. Nicole Malliotakis's Staten Island office, survived a direct lightning strike while walking to a routine dentist appointment, escaping with no burns and an overnight hospital stay.
Fahmy was roughly 15 to 20 feet from his car on Todt Avenue near Windsor Road in the Castleton Corners section of Staten Island when a bolt hit him during Thursday's storms. He collapsed on the spot, conscious but in searing pain, and cried out for help. A neighbor, Stefanie Homan, heard the shouting from inside her home, ran to her door, and dialed 911.
Paramedics rushed Fahmy to Northwell Staten Island University Hospital, where doctors kept him overnight for evaluation. They found no burn marks. He walked out the next day, a result that defies the mental image most people carry of a lightning strike but tracks with federal health data showing 90 percent of victims survive, the New York Post reported.
Fahmy had been carrying an umbrella, a detail that raises an obvious question about whether the metal shaft played a role, though no expert assessment appears in any available account. He told WNBC what the moment felt like:
"It was a very intense burning sensation, tingling, numbness, pain. Severe pain in both of my feet."
WNBC obtained video footage of the strike itself. Fahmy also told the station he had been "nearly 15, 20 feet away from my car" when the bolt connected, close enough to safety that the margin between an ordinary errand and a life-altering event was measured in seconds.
Homan, the neighbor who called 911, described what she heard to WNBC:
"I heard yelling, heard 'help me, help me,' so I ran to my door and saw him down here on the ground, so I got the phone and called 911."
Her quick response likely shortened the gap between the strike and professional medical care, a gap that matters in any emergency but especially one involving electrical injury. Lightning strikes can cause cardiac arrest, nerve damage, and internal burns that do not always show on the skin.
Fahmy told WABC that his hospital stay produced a surprisingly clean bill of health. "No burns. I had multiple body exams, no burns at all," he said. He was discharged the following day.
The odds of being struck by lightning are less than one in a million in any given year, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Lightning does, however, hit the ground across the United States more than 37 million times annually, a number large enough that freak strikes at places like an Ohio prison have killed and injured people with little warning.
The record for surviving the most lightning strikes belongs to Roy Sullivan, a Virginia man who was hit seven separate times over the course of his life. Fahmy will presumably be content with one.
Rep. Malliotakis, the Republican congresswoman whose Staten Island office employs Fahmy, posted a statement praising both the neighbor and the hospital staff. "We are happy, grateful and relieved that Thomas, a valued member of our Staten Island office, is alive and well after being struck by lightning last week," she said. She added: "We appreciate the good Samaritan and medical staff at Staten Island University Hospital who helped him get emergency care."
Fahmy's first Sunday after the strike, he went to church. "I went on church Sunday to say thank you God," he told WABC. The Saturday before that, he bought a Mega Millions ticket, a reasonable impulse for a man who had just beaten million-to-one odds in the worst possible version of the lottery.
The $160 million Mega Millions jackpot drawn the following Tuesday night went unclaimed. Nobody won. Fahmy's luck, it seems, was spent on something more valuable than a payout.
Mass-casualty lightning events remain rare but not unheard of. An incident at an Ohio correctional facility sent sixteen people to the hospital and required one to be airlifted, a reminder that a single storm cell can produce devastating results in seconds.
Fahmy offered a simple takeaway from his brush with a force of nature that kills dozens of Americans every year. "Just to appreciate life, smile and breathe fresh airs once in a while and don't let life overwhelm you," he said.
Not bad advice from a man who was flat on his back on a Staten Island sidewalk a week ago, calling for help, and who got it, from an alert neighbor, a fast ambulance crew, and what he clearly believes was something higher than both.
