Throughout the day, the tall leafy tree was a source of shade and comfort for Amber Escudero-Contostatis.
Amid 90-degree heat, she spent hours canvassing tourists outside the White House for donations to help refugees in Ukraine, her family said. As she finished her shift last Thursday, a storm rolled overhead, thickening with clouds, rain and thunder.
That Thursday happened to be her 28th birthday, her family said. So, as Amber waited for her husband to pick her up for a holiday dinner, she again sought the shelter of the same tree, huddled with three others under its spreading branches, according to her family and authorities.
Three people died after being struck by lightning near the White House on Thursday
One was Brooks Lambertson, a young and up-and-coming bank vice president from Los Angeles. There was Donna Mueller, 75, a retired teacher, and her husband, James Mueller, 76, who came from Wisconsin to Washington will celebrate their 56th wedding anniversary. There was also Amber, a young woman from California whose travels in the Middle East teaching English had sparked a desire to help those affected by war and poverty in this region.
They whether strangers were brought to this very spot on the east side of Lafayette Square at this very moment for various reasons—business, vacation, a passion to help.
Just before 7 p.m., was in this place – under a deciduous tree about 100 feet from a statue of President Andrew Jackson — that lightning struck.
Experts later recorded a strike in the area like six separate shocks of electricity hitting the same point within half a second. If the electricity had struck the tree first, experts said, it would have sent hundreds of millions of volts coursing through it before passing into the bodies of those gathered beneath it.
“It shook the whole area,” an eyewitness later recounted. “It literally sounded like a bomb went off.”
The strike leaving all four seriously injured. The Secret Service and the U.S. Park Service, which keep the park in front of the White House under constant patrol, came to the rescue.
On Friday morning, police said the elderly couple from Wisconsin had died. Later that night, the Los Angeles banker also died, police said.
Amber would be the only survivor.
What happens when lightning strikes – and how to stay safe
The lightning strike stopped Amber’s heart, said her brother, Robert F. Escudero. Two nurses who happened to be visiting the White House on vacation and saw the Secret Service running to help immediately began CPR and were able to restore her pulse, he said.
The lightning strike left her unable to walk and caused severe burns on the left side of her body and arm, her family said. That’s the side her purse was on, carrying an iPad she used to sign people up for donations for refugees.
Her parents arrived in Washington from California, and her mother documented her recovery struggle on Facebook. The lightning strike left Amber struggling to breathe at first, her mother Julie Escudero wrote. But by Friday, nurses were able to get her off the ventilator.
The lightning also damaged her short-term memory. She was scared and confused by what happened to her. “We definitely don’t want her to remember the incident right now,” her mother wrote on Facebook. But every time she wakes up, her mother writes, she asks what happened to her, is she going to die and will she be able to walk? Her family said one thing she was particularly worried about was her work raising funds for refugees.
She majored in international studies in college and has traveled to Morocco and the United Arab Emirates, according to her brother and her work profile. She spent a year teaching English in Jordan and soon after began fundraising for non-profit organizations. She began working in Washington last year for a group called Threshold Giving, focusing particularly on fundraising for the International Rescue Committee, a global aid agency.
“The first thing she said to me when we FaceTimed was, ‘I have to go back to work on Saturday,'” Robert Escudero said. “She worries about raising money for refugee children. She asked me “Who’s going to get the money for them if I’m not there?”
A friend started a GoFundMe page to raise money for her medical bills. Her brother said he promised Amber he would work with Threshold Giving in the coming days to create a way for people who learn about her story of survival to donate to refugees.
The only thing her family still hasn’t touched on her is the fate of the others who were with her that night under the tree.
“She’s starting to realize that there have been others and she wants to know how they’re doing and what she did wrong,” her mother said in a Facebook post on Sunday. “She cares so much about others that it’s going to be hard for her.”
On Sunday, many traces of the fatal lightning strike were still visible in Lafayette Square.
One tree bore streaks of charred bark, cracks and a large gash in the main trunk where the tree remained contorted like a bruise. People passing through Lafayette Square would stop by the tree to gaze at the scars.
One of them was Cal Vargas, a childhood friend of Lambertson’s who has passed away. He brought a wreath and a bouquet of white flowers to place at the base of the tree. Vargas and Lambertson were friends since kindergarten and grew up together in Folsom, California, where they shared a passion for sports and the Sacramento Kings.
“He was an amazing person,” Vargas said quietly. “Always had a smile on his face, always looked on the bright side of things.”
Earlier on the day the lightning struck, lambertson, 29, arrived in washington on a business trip from los angeles. He was hanging out before a dinner reservation when he got caught in the storm, Vargas said.
In a phone interview, Lambertson’s father, whom The Washington Post did not identify by name to protect his privacy, said his son was “probably the best human being I know.” He said his son’s kindness, generosity and humility “showed in everything he did, in all his interactions with people.”
He worked at City National Bank as a vice president managing the company’s sponsorships. He had done marketing for the NBA’s Los Angeles Clippers, and graduated from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, according to a statement from the bank.
The elderly Wisconsin couple, who also died that day, were celebrating their 56th wedding anniversary, family members said.
Donna Mueller, 75, and her husband James Mueller, 76, were high school sweethearts before they married. James owned a drywall business for decades while his wife worked as a teacher, according to one of their daughters-in-law, who also spoke on condition of anonymity to protect her privacy.
The couple lived in Janesville, Wisconsin, about 70 miles west of Milwaukee, and had five grown children, ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. “They would both do anything for their family and friends,” relatives said in a statement.
The chances of someone being killed by lightning are extremely rare. In the past decade, only an average of 23 people in the United States died each year.
Multiple deaths are even rarer. Before last week’s strike, the last time three people died in a single accident was more than 18 years ago on June 27, 2004, when three people in Georgia were struck by trees at Bedford Dam State Park, said John Jensenius, a National lightning protection council.
Because lightning tends to strike tall objects, experts warn that taking shelter under a tree during a thunderstorm is very dangerous. When a tree is struck by the electric charge, the moisture and sap in the tree easily conducts the electricity, transferring it to the ground around the tree, experts say.
“When lightning strikes a tree, the charge does not penetrate deep into the ground, but rather spreads across the surface of the ground,” Jensenius said. “This makes the entire area around a tree dangerous and anyone standing under or near a tree is vulnerable.”
For that reason and others, Amber’s survival feels like a miracle, her family said. If it hadn’t happened right outside the White House, where Secret Service agents are stationed. If the two sisters who revived her weren’t on leave and saw what happened.
On Saturday night, Amber was finally able to take a few steps on her own, her family said. She was set to start a master’s program in international relations this fall at Johns Hopkins University, the latest step in her work trying to help refugees and those suffering abroad.
“She is an amazing person with a strong will. And she has such a heart for others,” her brother said. “So the goal now is to get her walking again by the time classes start in a few weeks.”
Magda Jean-Louis contributed to this report.
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