When Amber Escudero-Contostathi regained consciousness a few days after being struck by lightning, she had a bad feeling there were other victims. So the 28-year-old grabbed the iPad by her hospital bed and typed “Lightning Strike DC” into a Google search. It saw headlines that three people died and one person survived during a storm near the White House. But it wasn’t until she saw two familiar faces in photos that she became upset. “I just remember reading an article and saying, ‘There’s no way,’” she said in an interview Tuesday with the Washington Post. “But then I looked at pictures of the old couple.” Officials say Escudero-Kontostatthis ended up huddled with the couple — Donna Mueller, 75, and James Mueller, 76 — and 29-year-old Brooks A. Lambertson, a bank employee in the city from Los Angeles, as a storm rolled through. August 4th. But Escudero-Kontostathis said her last memory was talking with the Muellers, who were in D.C. to celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary, earlier that day. Strangers gathered under a tree. Then lightning struck. Escudero-Kontostatthis approached them as part of her work with the International Rescue Committee, canvassing the area for donations to help refugees in Ukraine. They bonded over Mueller’s home state of Wisconsin, where Escudero-Contostatis had recently traveled for a family reunion and the joys of visiting the Green Bay Packers stadium, Escudero-Contostatis recalled. He recommended they check out the National Museum of African American History and Culture and Planet Word while in DC The next thing he knew, Escudero-Contostathis said, he was lying in a hospital bed, IVs piercing her body. A picture of the Muellers was now flashes on her iPad. They were killed, the article said. Somehow, she was still alive. In the days since the lightning struck Lafayette Square, Escudero-Kontostathis has learned to live with second-degree burns on her left side that feel like “10,000 grains of sand trying to go through every pore at the same time.” But the guilt of surviving the lightning that killed the Muellers and Lambertson haunts her. Escudero-Kontostatthis said she doesn’t remember the minutes before the strike, but worries that she motioned for the Muellers to join her under a tree to seek shelter from the rain. “My biggest fear is that I yelled at them again,” he said. “I couldn’t live with myself if it was like that. It’s my biggest fear, because I wanted to say ‘hello’ one more time before they left.” He feels similar pains for Lambertson, vice president of City National Bank. Escudero-Contostathi said she doesn’t remember interacting with him that day, but has since learned they have mutual friends from California. “I have this guilt: ‘Why did I succeed?’ ” he said. “I try to soothe myself with gratitude, ‘Well, I did it, so I’m not going to waste it.’” The four lightning victims were gathered by chance — three foreigners and Escudero-Contostathis, standing together not far from the president’s house. It was of Escudero-Contostathis 28th birthday, and it was almost time for her birthday dinner in Hamilton when the storm hit. Before 6pm that day, she rejected a phone call from her sister-in-law and nephews, who wanted to wish her a happy birthday. “At work Rn @thewhitehouse ! Dinner tonight!” she wrote from her Apple Watch. She then took out her phone and took two pictures of the sky, with dark clouds approaching. “It went from feeling 105° all day (literally based on my weather app) and now here comes the thunder,” she texted her sister-in-law, adding a laughing emoji. About an hour later, she and the other three ended up sheltering from the torrential rain under a tall, leafy tree about 100 feet from the Andrew Jackson statue, officials said. Experts recorded a flash of lightning in the area as six individual power surges hit the same spot on the ground within half a second. “It shook the whole area,” an eyewitness told The Post. “Like a bomb literally went off, that’s what it sounded like.” All four were taken to hospital. Authorities soon revealed that the Muellers had been killed. So was Lambertson, whose father described him as “probably the best person I know.” Escudero-Contostathi’s heart also stopped, with her husband 12 minutes away from taking her out for dinner. But two nurses visiting the White House for the holidays rushed to help. They performed CPR on all four victims, along with law enforcement. It is not clear why only Escudero-Contostathis survived. Numerous thunderstorms with frequent lightning moved through the area that Thursday afternoon, with temperatures in the mid to upper 90s earlier in the day. Experts warn that standing under a tree in such conditions can be dangerous. When a tree is struck by an electrical charge, the moisture and sap easily conduct the electricity and transfer it to the surrounding ground, according to a National Weather Service website on the science of lightning. If the electricity had struck the tree first, experts said, hundreds of millions of volts would have passed through the tree before traveling through and over the bodies of those beneath it. What happens when lightning strikes – and how to stay safe Escudero-Kontostatthis, whose time teaching English in the Middle East inspired her to help those affected by war and poverty, believes her shoes may have helped save her. That day, she was wearing sandals with thick rubber soles, which she said she believes could absorb some of the electricity. She wore the same platform shoes back in Lafayette Square on Monday when “Good Morning America” filmed her reunion with the nurses she credits with saving her life. Under blue skies, Escudero-Contostathis stood in the green park outside the White House, using a walker. Jessee Bonty and Nolan Haggard, the EMS nurses from Texas who performed CPR on those injured in the blast, went to her. “Hi, I’m Jessee, can I give you a hug?” said Bonty, who two weeks ago felt Escudero-Kontostathis’s hand grasp hers before losing his pulse on two separate occasions. “Hi, I’m Amber. Yes, please,” Escudero-Contostathis replied, before wrapping her bound arms around the woman who rescued her. That night, Escudero-Kontostatthis and her husband went to Hamilton for the birthday dinner she never had. They brought Bondy and Haggard with them. “We’re literally best men now,” he said. “He will be in my life forever.” William Wan contributed to this report.
