Pa. Man Struck by Lightning, Again

HAMLIN, Pa. (AP) - July 29, 2007 -- Lightning can strike twice. Just ask Don Frick.

Frick survived his second lightning strike Friday - 27 years to the day of his first - and emerged a bit shaken with only a burned zipper and a hole in the back of his jeans.

"I'm lucky I'm alive," Frick told the AP in a phone interview Sunday night.

Frick was attending Hamlin's Ole Tyme Daz festival on Friday afternoon when a storm came up quickly. He and six others sought refuge in a nearby shed shortly before lightning struck the ground nearby. The strike sent a shock through Frick and four others in the shed.

"It put me up against the wall," the 68-year-old Frick said. "When I came to and realized I was alive, the first thing that came to my mind was that I'm pretty lucky.

"It burned my zipper off, burned my pockets, but didn't burn me."

None of the others in the shed were seriously injured, said Frick, whose experience was first reported by WNEP-TV.

Twenty-seven years earlier, Frick was driving a tractor-trailer in Lenox, Pa., when, he said, the antenna of the truck was struck by lightning. He said his left side was injured in that strike and that he was laid up for three-to-four weeks.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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