The six-year-old boy struck by lightning on a Pretoria golf course on Wednesday is still in a very critical and unstable condition, the Pretoria East hospital said on Thursday.
Spokeswoman Mandé Taubkun said it is still early days and Slade Owen-Ellis’s internal organs have suffered from the heat and electricity that surged through him in the lightning strike that killed his father, paramedic Roger Owen-Ellis.
Owen-Ellis and Slade were at Garsfontein golf course on Wednesday when light rain started falling.
The two were running towards a clubhouse when disaster struck. As they passed a tree — just metres shy of shelter — a bolt of lightning hit Owen-Ellis.
The charge apparently travelled through their joined hands to Slade, and father and son collapsed next to each other.
Nurses at a function nearby tried to resuscitate the two until paramedics from NetCare 911 took over.
Paramedic Deon Brink said he resuscitated both father and son on the golf course and raced them to the nearby Pretoria East hospital, but Owen-Ellis died of his injuries shortly afterwards.
Owen-Ellis is the 15th person to die from a lightning strike in the past two weeks.
On Tuesday, three children died in the Eastern Cape after being struck by lightning. A bolt of lightning also injured three of their friends.
On Monday, lightning claimed the life of a woman in the Xonya district near Ncgobo in the Eastern Cape.
At the weekend, lightning killed a woman from the Queenstown district and two of her friends were injured.
And, in Port Elizabeth, a man and his future mother-in-law were killed by lightning at the weekend near Wells Estate beach.
At the end of November, seven people were killed by lightning while in a hut on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast.
The South African Weather Service said on Thursday it is unable to determine if this has been a particularly lightning-active year.
Scientist Pieter Visser said the service is in the process of acquiring a lightning detection network from overseas at a cost of about R20-million.
”Through sensors on the ground we will be able to calculate the frequency and intensity of lightning activity,” he said.
He said the equipment will be so accurate that the data will be used in court for lightning insurance claims.
Visser said South Africa in general — and Johannesburg in particular — have one of the highest lightning strike rates in the world because of its topography and height above sea level. — Sapa