ometimes they\u2019ll keep the clothing, the strips of shirt or trousers that weren\u2019t cut away and discarded by the doctors and nurses. They\u2019ll tell and retell their story at family gatherings and online, sharing pictures and news reports of survivals like their own or far bigger tragedies. The video of a tourist hit on a Brazilian beach or the Texan struck dead while out running. The 65 people killed during four stormy days in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n
Only by piecing together the bystander reports, the singed clothing and the burnt skin can survivors start to construct their own picture of the possible trajectory of the electrical current, one that can approach 200 million volts and travel at one-third of the speed of light.<\/p>\n
In this way, Jaime Santana\u2019s family have stitched together some of what happened that Saturday afternoon in April 2016, through his injuries, burnt clothing and, most of all, his shredded broad-brimmed straw hat. \u201cIt looks like somebody threw a cannonball through it,\u201d says Sydney Vail, a trauma surgeon in Phoenix, Arizona, who helped care for Jaime after he arrived by ambulance, his heart having been shocked several times along the way as paramedics struggled to stabilise its rhythm.<\/p>\n
Jaime had been horse-riding with his brother-in-law and two others in the mountains behind his brother-in-law\u2019s home outside Phoenix, a frequent weekend pastime. Dark clouds had formed, heading in their direction, so the group had started back.<\/p>\n
They had nearly reached the house when it happened, says Alejandro Torres, Jaime\u2019s brother-in-law. He paces out the area involved, the landscape dotted with small creosote bushes just behind his acre of property. In the distance, the desert mountains rise, rippled chocolate-brown peaks against the horizon.<\/p>\n