Lightning kills father-of-three postal worker, burns his son in ‘one-in-a-million’ jetski accident

A Nevada family is reeling after a monster lightning bolt struck and killed a married father-of-three who was riding a jetski on a California reservoir Saturday.

Eugene Arao, 47, a US Army vet and postal carrier from Reno, was visiting the Stampede Reservoir north of Lake Tahoe when a thunderstorm rolled in quickly and unleashed its fury around 5:30 p.m., authorities and family members said.

“He took a direct lighting strike. He was knocked off the jetski and was not wearing a life vest and went under,” Sierra County Sheriff Mike Fisher told the Daily News in a phone interview Wednesday.

Arao was riding the sit-down vehicle with an adolescent family member at the time and was in the process of returning to shore to “trailer” the vehicle when he was struck about 20 feet out, Fisher said.

The youth, identified by an eyewitness as Arao’s son, was transported by ambulance to Truckee Hospital with injuries and survived, he said.

“We’re heartbroken and will miss Eugene so much. Eugene’s legacy will live on forever through my boys, Jeffrey, Cody, Brady and through all the wonderful lives he touched,” wife Cristina Arao said in a Facebook post late Tuesday.

Relatives called the tragedy a “one-in-a-million accident” in a statement on a GoFundMe page.

The injured son was “severely burned” by the strike, an eyewitness who described the incident in a series of Facebook posts said.

“It was horrifying. I am still in shock,” witness Shelly Brewster Bryant, who said she was 30 feet away from the bolt when it touched down, wrote. “Scariest thing I’ve ever been through.”

She said the blast “fried” the sonar on her family’s boat and “knocked the wind out of” her 9-year-old daughter.

She said her husband delivered her to shore with their daughter and later returned to help find Arao.

“He was able to locate him on our back up fish finder and dropped the anchor with a buoy. The divers showed up as we were leaving,” she wrote. “What a horrific tragedy...remember tomorrow is not promised.”

Sheriff Fisher said the divers eventually found Arao about 20 to 30 feet off the boat ramp in about 12 to 15 feet of water.

“It’s definitely a tragedy. It was a bad day out at the Stampede Reservoir,” Fisher told The News.

“Our lightning storms here come up fast and dissipate relatively quickly,” he said. “If lightning is forecast and appears to be coming, my recommendation would absolutely be to get off of the lake. I’ve seen some pretty intense strikes."

Still, he called Arao’s death “the first lighting fatality that I’m aware of for Sierra County.”

Deaths from lighting strikes are rare in California. The state reported 34 lightning fatalities between 1959 and 2016, compared to 143 for New York and 491 for Florida during that same period, according to weather station provider Vaisala.