Struck by lightning during a severe thunderstorm near the White House in Washington D.C., Amber Escudero-Kontostathis couldn’t understand why she was the only survivor among four victims.
Waking up after several days post-lightning strike, Amber Escudero-Kontostathis felt a heavy burden for the other victims.
The 28-year-old held an iPad next to her hospital bed and searched Google for “Lightning strikes in D.C.”. The search results indicated that three people had died, and one person survived the storm near the White House. It wasn’t until she saw the faces of the two victims in the photos that she felt deep sorrow.
Amber Escudero-Kontostathis.
“I remember reading an article and telling myself that it couldn’t happen. But then I saw their pictures,” she said.
No Memories
During a work trip for the International Rescue Committee to raise funds for refugees in Ukraine, Amber had the opportunity to meet Donna Mueller, 75, and James Mueller, 76. The three became close while in Wisconsin, the Muellers’ home state.
Portrait of the Muellers, victims of the lightning strike. (Photo: Family provided).
She advised them to visit the National Museum of African American History and Culture and the Planet Word Museum if they were in D.C.
According to authorities, Amber met the Muellers and Brooks A. Lambertson, 29, a bank employee from Los Angeles, on August 4, when the storm hit. The last memory Amber recalls is talking with the Muellers, who were in D.C. to celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary.
The next thing Amber remembers is lying in a hospital bed, wires and IVs connected to her body. News on the iPad informed her that the Muellers had died. She was still alive.
After the lightning strike at Lafayette Square, Amber had to learn to live with second-degree burns on her left side, which made her feel as if “10,000 grains of sand were simultaneously moving through each pore.” But the guilt she felt over the deaths of the Muellers and Lambertson truly haunted her.
Amber couldn’t remember everything that happened right before the moment of the strike, but it seemed she had gestured for the elderly couple to find some tree for shelter.
That heartbreaking feeling also extended to Brooks, the Vice President of the National City Bank. Amber didn’t clearly remember interacting with him that day, but they had many mutual friends from California.
“I feel guilty. Why did I survive? I just try to comfort myself with gratitude,” she said.
That day was Amber’s 28th birthday, and she had a birthday dinner planned in Hamilton that evening when the storm hit.
Before 6 PM that day, she had missed a birthday call from her sister-in-law and niece.
Afterward, she took her phone and snapped two pictures of the sky with approaching dark clouds to send to them.
“It’s 40 degrees Celsius today but a thunderstorm is coming,” she texted her sister-in-law, along with an emoji.
Lucky Sandals
Authorities reported that about an hour after the storm, Amber and three others were seeking shelter under a tall tree, approximately 100 meters from the statue of Andrew Jackson. Experts recorded a lightning strike in the area that equaled six separate electrical currents hitting the same spot on the ground within half a second.
Amber leaning on a walker during her “Good Morning America” interview, recounting her survival story. (Photo: ABC News).
All four were taken to the hospital. The Muellers did not survive, and neither did Brooks.
Amber’s heart stopped beating just 12 minutes before her husband arrived to take her out for her birthday dinner. Fortunately, two traveling nurses visiting the White House provided CPR for all four victims in time.
No one knows why Amber was able to survive.
“It shook the whole area, like a bomb,” one witness said.
Multiple storms with lightning struck the area as temperatures hovered around 32 degrees Celsius on the evening of August 4.
According to the National Weather Service’s lightning science information, standing under a tree in such conditions can be dangerous. When a tree becomes electrified, moisture and tree sap can easily conduct electricity and transfer it to the surrounding ground. If the current strikes the tree first, hundreds of millions of volts can travel from the trunk and into the bodies of those standing underneath.
Amber believes that perhaps the thick-soled rubber sandals she wore that day absorbed some of the electricity and saved her life. These were the same shoes she wore while teaching English in the Middle East, helping the poor and those affected by war.
She wore those shoes again when she returned to Lafayette Square on August 15 for a segment on “Good Morning America”, reuniting with the nurses who saved her.
Under the sky on the green lawn outside the White House, Amber appeared with a walker. Jessee Bonty and Nolan Haggard, the emergency nurses from Texas who performed CPR on the injured that day, came to meet Amber.
That night, Amber and her husband went to Hamilton for the most special birthday dinner of her life. They invited both Bonty and Haggard to join them.
“Now we are literally best friends. They will always have a place in my life,” she said.
