Nature Puts on Light Show : Bolt Injures Farm Worker as Storm Sweeps Over Area

A farm worker was critically injured Friday when lightning struck a field near Oxnard as Ventura County’s first fall storm--an unpredictable mix of thunder, lightning and torrential showers--unleashed up to half an inch of rain in some areas.

Eulogio Rodriguez, 53, of Santa Paula was working as a foreman in a pepper field in the midst of driving rain when a lightning bolt struck him about 7:45 a.m. Witnesses said Rodriguez had been sitting on the ground to ward off lightning strikes, but he apparently stood up just as a bolt descended.

“No one saw him get hit,” said Steven Gill, the owner of Rio Farms, who hired Rodriguez several weeks ago. “They just turned around and he was down.”

Several men began performing CPR on Rodriguez as he went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics, who arrived minutes later, were able to regain a pulse en route to St. John’s Regional Medical Center.

Rodriguez was in a coma and listed in critical condition late Friday, said Dr. Allen Hooper, director of the hospital’s emergency room. It is too early to tell about brain or kidney damage, he said, but Rodriguez’s pupils were responding to light.

By noon Friday, the bulk of the storm system had swept through Ventura County, moving into Santa Barbara and Kern counties.

Partly cloudy skies and only a 20% chance of rain were predicted for Ventura County this morning, although scattered showers were expected to continue off the coast.

National Weather Service forecaster Mike Wofford said the storms began building late Thursday when an upper-level low-pressure system collided with moist air from the south and moved ashore.

The mixture produced a dazzling light show, with jagged strikes illuminating the sky throughout the night. At dawn, dozens of bolts danced on the horizon against the backdrop of Santa Rosa Island.

“It’s unusual to have the lightning continue for that amount of time,” Wofford said. “It’s because the low-pressure system isn’t moving anywhere.”

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The mountainous areas north of Ojai received the most precipitation, with county rain gauges picking up 0.67 of an inch in Matilija Canyon and just over half an inch in Rose Valley. More than a third of an inch fell at the Government Center in Ventura.

Eastern Ventura County missed most of the overnight rain, but heavy skies and scattered bursts were reported by midday Friday.

County meteorologists said it is unusual to get tropical storms this late in September.

“It’s not often you have thunder rumbling off and on all night on the first day of fall,” said Terry Schaeffer, an agricultural meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

Forecasters were reluctant to predict whether the upcoming winter would be wetter or drier than normal.

“I don’t have a good feel for what the winter will be like yet,” Schaeffer said. “We’ll just have to wait and see a little bit longer.”

Aside from the accident involving Rodriguez, no other serious rain-related mishaps were reported in Ventura County, although emergency workers were kept busy.

Said Highway Patrol Officer Staci Morse: “It’s just been a very busy day of constant calls. It seems to be all over the county.”

Road workers cleared several minor debris slides from Pacific Coast Highway, said Caltrans supervisor Warran Finley.

And crews using heavy equipment cleared mud and boulders that had tumbled across the southbound lane of California 33 north of Rose Valley, he said.

“It’s a small one,” he said. “Nothing they can’t handle right away.”

Some minor street flooding was reported in the Oxnard Plain, along Wooley and Victoria roads.

Despite the frequent lightning and thunderclaps, some residents refused to stay inside.

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Duffy Cink, a golf pro at Soule Park Golf Course in Ojai, said he warned each foursome teeing off Friday morning that golfers were exposing themselves to danger.

“Carrying a golf club out on the course is like holding a lightning rod,” Cink said. “We tell golfers it is at their own discretion, and we don’t stop them if they want to play.”

At least 170 golfers decided to play the odds with Mother Nature and hit the links, Cink said. Another 56 opted to wait for another day.

Cink said he has seen players struck by lightning on other golf courses.

“I tell the golfer . . . ‘Have fun, but I’m staying in the shop,’ ” he said.

Times staff writer Christina Lima and correspondents Greg Rippee and Kay Saillant contributed to this report.