A Neighbour’s Bravery Saves Elderly Woman After Lightning Strikes Home

Eighty-two-year-old Jozafi Stamers was just settling in on Tuesday night, when something extremely unexpected happened to her house.

“I was just going to bed, I’d shut off the TV and I heard noise,” recalls the 82-year-old.

“Sparkling.”

That sparkling? A bolt of lightning striking a tree right next to her home, and subsequently setting the roof of her west end residence ablaze.

Amazingly though, the elderly woman didn’t realize that she was in a great deal of immediate danger. Thankfully, someone else did.

“As fast as possible I let the lady get out because she didn’t notice as she watched TV that the roof was on fire,” said neighbour Bogie Zawisdowski (pictured).

Indeed it was both a dramatic and heroic rescue, and needless to say it impressed Stamers.

“The neighbour came in the back door banging,” she said.

“By the time I came out in bare feet, the fire department was there.”

And it’s a good thing too, because in the few moments the blaze went unabated it caused $45,000 worth of damage to the home.

Still, Stamers and her family are grateful just to have a structure left, and of course to be alive.

“It could have been so much worse,” admits Stamers’ daughter Vija Mallia.

“We’re just thankful that she’s okay.”

Yes she is, and she owes it all to the quick thinking and bravery of one man.

“I thanked him last night and I will thank him every day … every day for the rest of my life,” said Mallia.

Stamers? She concurs.

“He is a hero to me,” she smiled.

“Thank you very much for saving my life.”

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