They say lightning doesn’t strike twice but Adam Tyne, Immediate Assistants’ Paramedic at a mine site 140 kilometres north of Mt Isa recently treated two employees who might dispute that.

“It was lunch time so everyone was making their way to the lunch room when the lightning struck without warning,” Adam said.

“Two people in separate areas of the camp reported feeling electricity pass through their bodies.”

A lightning strike represents a weather-related medical emergency and has the same effect as electrocution.

It can cause heart and lung damage, superficial burns, temporary paralysis, ruptured eardrums, loss of consciousness and cardiac arrest.

“Neither of the men, who were both in their early 20s, had burns so we know they didn’t suffer a direct lighting strike,” Adam said.

“One of them, a cook who was in the outside deck of the lunch room had worse effects than the other because he had cardiac changes on his ECG and was in quite a bit of pain.

“He happened to have titanium plates throughout his body from previous surgeries and it seems the lightning strike may have affected one of them.”

Being so far from the nearest hospital, Adam stabilised both patients and kept them comfortable until he could rendezvous on the main road 50 kilometres away with the Queensland Ambulance Service to take them into Mt. Isa.

Adam Tyne is a level five paramedic whose qualifications include advanced training in paramedical science.