Advertisement

Brandon Jenkins, 25, was struck by lightning and killed while working on a barge near the Port Arthur terminal of Motiva Enterprises oil refinery.

Stat Care EMS of Beaumont responded to the call at Texaco Island at about 11 a.m., supervisor Rod Carroll said.

The crew aboard the vessel administered CPR 'very effectively'as they brought Jenkins to the shore and he still was alive when emergency personnel got him to Christus St. Mary Hospital in town, Carroll said.

Jenkins, a tanker man in training, was aboard one of two barges being pushed by a tugboat. The vessels belong to his employer, Blessey Marine, a petroleum transport company from New Orleans, La., company president Walter Blessey said.

'You hear about (people struck by lightning) on golf courses, parks, people in their yards,'Blessey said. 'But I've never heard of someone struck by lightning in a vessel.'