EVERGLADES CITY, Fla. – A wildlife expert and biologist got the shock of a lifetime after he was struck by lightning while recording a promotional video in Everglades City, Florida.
Forrest Galante was in southern Florida filming content when the incident occurred and said weather conditions were perfect until he and his crew were nearing the end of filming.
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“We’re getting some great shots. Beautiful day. Water’s clear. Things are going great,” he said in a YouTube video. “Towards the end of the day, we come up on the last thing we need to do, and the rain starts to roll in.”
He said he began hearing thunder off in the distance but didn’t think anything of it.
“It’s Florida. It rains here. There’s lightning and thunder all the time,” he said.
But a team member told Galante that he was getting worried about the weather that was about to roll in.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t think we should, man. That thunder, the rain is pretty serious,’” Galante said. “And I’m like, ‘Shut up, Mitch. We’re fine.’ Like always, which is our dynamic.”
So off they went into a remote swamp in the Florida Everglades to get their last shot of the day: a product review.
The video shows Galante standing in waist-deep water, giving the review, when a bolt of lightning strikes just next to him, and the crack of thunder causes everyone to duck and run.
“I got hit,” he said in the video. “I felt it. Yeah, I got hit. That hurt.”
While reflecting on the moment he was struck, he said he didn’t realize what was happening.
“Out of nowhere, crazy thunder hits and this massive flash,” he said. “And I don’t see anything because I’m facing the camera. But I just feel my legs seize up and my butt. I’m like, literally paralyzed. For just a fraction of a second before trying to scramble up the bank and out of the water.”
Galante said he didn’t realize how close the lightning bolt was until he reviewed the footage, but he felt it.
“Through that superconductive water (the lightning) has just gone shooting up my legs into my chest, into my heart and into my mouth, actually,” he said.
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While he said he was pretty sore after the incident, there’s one thing that he hasn’t been able to shake off.
And that is the taste of metal in his mouth. So, he’s been chewing gum to try and get rid of the taste.
He said he was lucky that he and his team weren’t seriously injured from the lightning strike.
“I’m not a person who gets rattled by a narrow experience, but sort of coming down from it now, the whole thing is pretty crazy,” he said. “Like, it’s crazy to think how close we were to a lightning strike. It’s crazy the reaction I’m having with regards to the soreness in my legs and butt and this metallic taste in my mouth.”
Galante said he and his team didn’t get checked out by a doctor, and the symptoms they were experiencing after the near-death experience have started to subside and go away.