{"id":24848,"date":"2025-07-26T06:09:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-26T06:09:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/24848\/"},"modified":"2025-07-26T06:09:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-26T06:09:12","slug":"edmonton-woman-survives-being-struck-by-lightning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/24848\/","title":{"rendered":"Edmonton woman survives being struck by lightning"},"content":{"rendered":"

The term \u201clucky to be alive\u201d may be an overused phrase, but in this case, it\u2019s appropriate after an Edmonton woman survived being struck by lightning.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It happened Thursday night in west Edmonton, as thunderstorms rolled through the region in the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Global News is not naming the 21-year-old woman because she is sedated in hospital, unable to give her consent.<\/p>\n

But her friend, Laura Penner, saw the strike happen in the west end Callingwood area. They had just parted ways and her friend was heading to a bus stop across the street around 4:10 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe storm, the rain just started happening as she walked out and so as soon as she got across she was struck by the lightning,\u201d Penner said.<\/p>\n

Penner was watching through her living room window and saw light surround her friend, who then fell to the ground.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt was within a span of about 10 seconds of her walking outside of the house.<\/p>\n

Penner and her partner were getting ready to leave the house themselves, and sprang into action.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI got my partners to go over there help out with CPR while I called EMS,\u201d Penner said.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t4:23
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A bus pulled up to the stop and those who got off also jumped into providing aid. Marty Heemeryck was one of those bus passengers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere was a young lady laying on the ground, her legs were black and yellow, she was flopping around, in and out, trying to breathe,\u201d Heemeryck said. \u201cIt was a scary moment for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Heemeryck said he didn\u2019t know what was happening at first.<\/p>\n

\u201cI first saw was somebody passed out on the ground and given the circumstances of the area, I said, is Narcan needed?\u201d she said, adding friends quickly assured him it wasn\u2019t an overdose, but a freak accident.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI was concerned and saying prayers for her,\u201d Heemeryck said. \u201cEverybody was great. I mean, they were concerned to help her, really, whether it was drugs or lightning.<\/p>\n

\u201cWay to go Edmonton.\u201d<\/p>\n

EMS arrived shortly after that and took the unconscious woman into the ambulance.<\/p>\n

The 21-year-old is now in a medically induced coma at the University of Alberta hospital, her friends said, recovering from burns sustained during the lightning strike.<\/p>\n

Each year on average in Canada, there are between two and three lightning-related deaths and 180 lightning-related injuries, according to Statistics Canada<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People camping and hiking account for the largest percentage of those killed by lightning (22 per cent), with outdoor workers accounting for another 22 per cent of fatalities.<\/p>\n

StatsCan said in the case of most fatalities and injuries, people were in open areas or taking shelter under a tree.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t0:26
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\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The term \u201clucky to be alive\u201d may be an overused phrase, but in this case, it\u2019s appropriate after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,18000,20148,44,20149,1133],"class_list":["post-24848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-edmonton-weather","tag-lightning","tag-news","tag-struck-by-lightning","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}