Utah contractor narrowly escaped with his life after lightning struck his Ford F-150 while he was driving through a severe storm, causing the pickup to burst into flames and burn almost completely to the ground.
Casey Pettus was heading north on Interstate 15 from St. George toward Cedar City at about 12:30 p.m. Wednesday when lightning slammed into his 2021 Ford F-150 Hybrid near mile marker 50, according to the Utah Highway Patrol.
Pettus had already realized that his rear driver’s-side tire had blown and was slowly losing air. He hoped to make it to an exit in Cedar City for repairs, but the dangerous situation quickly became far worse.
“It was so fast,” Pettus told KSL. “It took a second or two seconds to register, but it went through the truck, it went through me — not that I felt the lightning or anything.”
He said the strike created an intense jolt that seemed to force him down in his seat.
“And then I was like, ‘Holy cow, I just got struck by lightning,’” he recalled.
The lightning knocked out the truck’s power while Pettus was still moving on the interstate. With the power steering no longer working, he had to wrestle with the wheel to guide the pickup safely onto the shoulder.
Pettus said motorists behind him appeared stunned by what they had just witnessed.
“It didn’t feel like I hit anything, but just like my whole truck got hit and then, you know, a big flash of light,” he said.
Smoke soon began filling the cab. Pettus managed to grab his phone and wallet before jumping out, but he was forced to leave behind the expensive tools he used for his contracting work.
Within about five minutes, the pickup was completely engulfed in flames.
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Dramatic photos from the scene showed fire tearing through the truck while a massive plume of black smoke rose above the highway. Images taken afterward revealed that much of the vehicle’s front half had been destroyed.
The Utah Highway Patrol declared the truck a total loss.
Pettus said he had been traveling to Cedar City during a downpour to bid on a possible home remodeling job for a friend.
Although he remained calm during the emergency, he said there was little he could do as flames began spreading inside the vehicle.
“Your truck is starting to catch fire from the inside,” Pettus said. “What do you do?”
Remarkably, he escaped without any injuries.
Pettus described the incident as “super crazy” and said he felt incredibly lucky and grateful to still be alive.
“It’s still even hard for me to comprehend that this even happened,” he said.
He is now working with his insurance company over the loss of the truck and the tools inside.
Utah Highway Patrol Cpl. Justin Faust said the intensity of the fire inside the lightning-struck pickup made for an unusual scene.
Faust advised drivers caught in dangerous lightning storms to get off the highway and seek appropriate shelter when it is safe to do so.
“That’s the unsettling part about Mother Nature being unpredictable,” he said.
Ladd’s Towing, a company based in nearby Kanarraville, was called to remove the burned-out truck.
Tow truck operator Mark Hodgins said Pettus was understandably shaken after losing both his vehicle and costly work equipment.
“He lost his truck, and he had quite a bit of expensive tools in it that he lost,” Hodgins said.
Hodgins added that in eight years of towing vehicles, he had never responded to a truck struck by lightning.
No other vehicles were involved in the incident, authorities said.
The fire caused traffic delays in the northbound lanes of Interstate 15, and both lanes were temporarily shut down while emergency crews cleared the scene. The highway reopened by about 5 p.m.
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