Coroner: Lightning Strike Killed Elk Hunters Found Dead In Colorado

The bodies of two elk hunters — Andrew Porter of Asheville, North Carolina, and Ian Stasko of Salt Lake City, Utah — who went missing in southern Colorado on Sept. 11 were found Thursday. Some Wyoming hunters say it’s a grim reminder of the dangers weather and other backcountry hazards pose. (Saguache County Sheriff's Office) A lightning strike killed two elk hunters who went missing Sept. 11 in southern Colorado were found dead on Thursday, the coroner who investigated the case confirmed Monday afternoon.

Lightning might have stuck a tree that Andrew Porter of Asheville, North Carolina, and Ian Stasko of Salt Lake City, Utah, both 25, were standing under, Conejos County, Colorado Coroner Richard Martin told Cowboy State Daily.

The bodies were found fully clothed and didn’t show any outward signs of trauma, Martin said.

He said determining the cause of death was “a pretty tough case,” because in most instances of fatal lightning strikes, there are entry and/or exit wounds from a massive bolt of electricity.

The tree that Porter and Stasko were apparently standing under also didn’t show any signs of a strike.

Martin said there’s no way of knowing for certain what transpired, but he surmised that the electricity from the bolt that struck the tree likely traveled through the tree, and into the ground.

And then the conductivity through the ground is probably what killed the two men, he said.

It’s likely that the fatal effect was that “all electrical functions” in their bodies were stopped instantly by the massive jolt coming from the lightning, he said.

Lightning can be extremely dangerous, meteorologist Jan Curtis told Cowboy State Daily.

It doesn’t have to strike people directly to cause serious injury of death, he said.

If the ground is wet, in can conduct electricity from a nearby strike, said Curtis, who spent his career did meteorology and climatology for the U.S. Navy, the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. He also was the Wyoming State Climatologist from 2001 to 2005.

Meteorologist Don Day of Cheyenne agreed that lightning should be taken seriously.

“Personally I think lightning danger is something people don't think enough about, especially the amount of thunderstorms we get in this region and how people like to be outside; mountains, lakes, golfing, etc.,” he said.

“Lightning does not follow many rules, you should have deep respect for its dangers and its unpredictability,” he added.

“While the odds of being struck by lightning is 1 in 1,222,000, the USA averages 43 deaths per year from lightning strikes. The four states with the most lightning related fatalities are Florida, Texas, Colorado, North Carolina and Alabama. A lot of these happen on golf courses,” Day said.

Storms were reported last week in the region of the Rio Grande National Forest in Colorado where Porter and Stasko were hunting.

Like countless other hunters throughout the region, Olin Machen of Cody has been following Porter and Stasko’s story closely.

He said he was saddened to learn about the official cause of their deaths. He urged hunters to be mindful about lightning, and to show respect and compassion for the men’s families.

“In general, lightning safety for hunters would be to stay below tree line when afternoon storms pop up. Drop down off the tops of ridges even if it’s only a short distance, stay away from big rock formations that lightning may travel horizontally across, and don’t have the metallic objects like a rifle or trekking poles on your body,” he said.

“For me, and as a result of this tragedy, I’ll add, stay as far away from my hunting buddy, but still in view, as possible. Perhaps we can all take a lesson away from this and take a moment to pray for their families,” he said.

I have several incidents in my life involving lightning that give me a healthy respect for it, but I won't panic in the presence of lightning.

When I was 16 back in the early Seventies, my father retired from the military and we moved back to his hometown where he had purchased his father's house which had 40-60 75 foot high blue spruce trees encircling the property that he and his father had planted back in the 1930's. He had a gunite swimming pool installed in the backyard, and he wanted to build a concrete deck and walkway around the pool.

My dad had never done any work with concrete, but he was unintimidated by any task, and he just purchased a book on how to do it and went out and bought an completely rust-encased "one-lunger" cement mixer-and did it. My brothers and I were enlisted to work on it. So, we had already poured the concrete for the four foot wide walkway all the way around the 40x20 foot pool, and it was done, so we began the patio which was probably 25x20 feet, had the forms laid and had already poured a few the day before. On the day we went out to do a few more squares in the form, we had just mixed and began the process of getting the concrete in a wheel barrow and pouring it into the form.

A thunderstorm came in, and we had already poured one square, so when the rain began to come down hard, we were trying desperately to smooth it out so we could cover it with a tarp, and BAM!

A lightning bolt hit the swimming pool and I happened to be looking at it when it happened, and I swear the entire pool flashed, but...that may just have been my eyes. (I did not even know lightning would hit water...but...I wasn't that versed on it.) It probably hit about 20 feet away.

Well. I can tell you, my brothers and I must have looked like we were shot out of a cannon, dropping everything and running in the house.

That was fifty years ago, and to this day, all that concrete we laid looks great, no cracks or spalling...except for that one square. It sticks out because all the other areas on that concrete patio look perfect, but that one has a grainy surface to it. I think that is damn good, living in New England, which is not friendly to concrete given the weather!

Then, when I was in the Navy down at Cecil Field in Jacksonville, FL, I was walking between two of the large, rectangular, white BEQ (Batchelor Enlisted Quarters) buildings (My memory tells me there were 4-6 of them) during a thunderstorm. I was halfway between the two, drenched to the skin, when BAM! A lightning bolt hit feet away. Could have been ten or more feet, but honestly I didn't see it.

What frightened me was that I could FEEL the electricity! I could feel it in my body (not as a 'shock' but...in a way I cannot explain) and oddly, I could feel it in my teeth and also got an odd metallic taste in my mouth. I very nearly shat myself, and ran directly into the building I was running to.

In 1985 during Hurricane Gloria, I was backpacking on a portion of the Appalachian Trail up in Northern New Hampshire (Near Smarts Mountain) with a friend and his brother, and we had been trudging up the side for three or four hours. It was only about a 3500' elevation, but I had a very heavy pack and I wasn't any kind of backpacking guru. We were hiking to the top of the mountain where we planned to spend a few nights in a dilapidated, abandoned Ranger shack, or in the tall fire tower that was still standing there.

It was pouring rain torrentially all day, and we made a mistake and took a fork of the trail and ended up going around the wrong side of the mountain, which forced us to backtrack. We ended up trudging around in the pouring rain for eight hours before we got to the top. The rain was so heavy that the trail going up the mountain was a nearly knee deep white water rapid. We tried to walk on the sides, but in the end, eventually gave up and just trudged through the water.

By the end of the day, I was cold, wet (even with full rain gear) and exhausted. But we were getting closer to our destination, and had stopped to take a breather, when BOOOOOOOOM! A lighting bolt hit somewhere nearby, close enough there was no delay, and being at that elevation, it sounded like we were right in the cloud that lightning bold had emanated from! I remember being exhausted, and reflexively bear-hugging a birch tree in terror with water streaming down my face, then instantly releasing it (realizing how dangerous that was) and was filled with new energy to get to the summit which was less than a half hour away!

Fortunately, nobody was in the abandoned Ranger Shack, and water was pouring through the overhead in so many places that there was one relatively dry spot in one corner, so that was where we set up for the night. We fried pieces of steak over a backpack stove, and ate it with rice pilaf. To this day, all three of us agree that was one of the most satisfying meals we had ever eaten!

Finally, in 1994, I went out to Oshkosh, WI for the big airshow they have each year in July or August. I had a small single man tent, with our car parked nearby. A thunderstorm came through, and it was getting pretty severe and I knew that being in a car was generally pretty safe as long as you have the windows rolled up. So we jumped into my car which was pointed towards where the storm was coming towards us from, and watched the show.

What a show.

I am from New England, where the terrain rarely affords the ability to see a large oncoming storm. Generally, you only see a very limited part of the storm. But in Oshkosh, as we watched that storm come in, we could see it from horizon to horizon. For those of you in other parts of the country, this may be old hat, but for me, being from New England, I was not accustomed to seeing it.

I watched in awe as the storm approached, and at any given time, I saw four or five simultaneous lighting strikes interspersed with individual strikes, so it was continuous. As I said, if you lived in the plains or Kansas, this is commonplace and not as big of a deal, but I had never seen anything like it, and it was intimidating.

I am not afraid of lightning, but I harbor a healthy respect for it, and even enjoy it, although I suppose it is akin to this passage from a letter from George Washington to his brother that was published in an English newspaper before the war, and read by King George III where the young Colonel Washington said:

“I fortunately escaped without a wound, tho’ the right Wing where I stood was exposed to & received all the Enemy’s fire and was the part where the man was killed & the rest wounded. I can with truth assure you, I heard Bulletts whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.”

King George III, after reading this was said to have commented:

“He would not say so, if he had been used to hear many.”

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