CASTLETON — Some have called James Bruno lucky, but that's not what he thinks.

"I've never been a lucky man in my life," the 57-year-old said. "I do believe there was someone else a little higher up who intervened on this one."

Bruno returned home Sept. 4 following a near-electrocution at a New York job site. It left burns on 45 percent of his body and sent him rotating through three hospitals over several weeks. Two of those weeks he spent in an induced coma.

"You gotta excuse my voice," he said, speaking with a gravelly rasp. "I don't know what's happening with that."

Sitting on his front porch on a Friday afternoon, he lifted his shirt, showing a skin graft on his back at his waist line. He also had burns on his arm and both legs and large red blotches covered much of his skin.

Bruno uses a walker around the house and a crutch to go up and down stairs. When he goes out, he uses a wheelchair. He said he should soon be able to start putting slight weight on his right foot.

"I feel pretty good," he said. "Sometimes I feel a little tired. I got a 3/4-inch hole in the bottom of my butt that's hard to sit on."

Bruno's right leg got it the worst. He credited a surgeon at Westchester Hospital in Valhalla, N.Y., with saving his foot.

"I saw it before the skin grafts," he said of his right foot. "It looked like something a dog had been chewing on."

On June 26, Bruno was at a job site in East Greenbush, N.Y., working for the Wisconsin-based Michaels Drilled Foundations, helping install the foundation for an electrical generating plant.

"I was talking about taking a long weekend," he said. "The Fourth of July was coming up and I had some work around the yard I wanted to do."

Local police said Bruno was working next to a crane that effectively acted as a lightning rod, drawing a power arc from nearby transmission lines. At the time, the local police chief said a nearby electrical storm may have contributed.

Bruno said he thinks the crane was too close to the power lines — less than half the distance specified by safety regulations. He said he thinks he might have said something to the crane operator, but that he is not sure that conversation was real and not a dream.

However it happened, Bruno said he doesn't really remember what came next. The police report describes the electricity traveling through Bruno's body and setting his clothes on fire. Coworkers used a fire extinguisher to put him out.

"All I remember of the whole thing after that was hollering that I didn't want to die," he said.

Bruno said he also remembers the foreman telling him that rescue personnel were coming, and that he kept yelling that he wanted to talk to his wife.

"If I was going to die, I wanted to tell her I loved her," he said. "That was on my mind the most."

When he did talk to her, Bruno said he just told her he was on his way to the hospital.

"I never did tell her what was on my mind the most," he said.

An official with the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration in New York said last week that the investigation into the accident was still under way but that she expected a report in the next couple of weeks.

Representatives from Michaels and Bruno's union — The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — declined to comment citing the potential for litigation.

New York-based attorney Dan Santola, who Bruno hired through the union, said workers' compensation rules preclude a lawsuit against Michaels, but that he anticipates filing a lawsuit against Atlanta-based LG Constructors, the general contractors, once he sees the OSHA report.

A representative of LG Constructors declined to comment.

"Personally, I'm not the type to go sue somebody but this here," Bruno paused and gestured up and down his body, "I don't want to get 10 years down the road and have problems."

Not being used to sitting still, Bruno said his wife and nurse have to keep after him to behave.

"My wife, God bless her, to deal with all of this — you know what kind of wife you got," he said, his voice cracking. "I get a little emotional sometimes. You've got to excuse me."

Bruno seemed more concerned with his wife, Kathleen, than he was with himself. They care for two of their grandchildren, a 7-year-old boy and an 18-month-old girl.

"I don't think he really realizes," Kathleen Bruno said of the boy. "He knows he got hurt. He doesn't ask many questions. He tries to help out. The little one, she doesn't know at all."

Though they've had help from friends, Kathleen Bruno said she hasn't had time to think about herself.

"I haven't even had a chance to sit down and cry," she said. "I have to be the rock."

Always safety-conscious, James Bruno said he is now being overly cautious with everything.

"I think I'm driving my wife nuts," he said. "I'm probably going to drive the guys nuts when I go back to work. … When I joined the union, that was the thing I liked about the union, they were safety-minded."

He said plans to get back to work as soon as he can.

"I've been in this business a long time — almost 39 years I've been doing it," he said. "I like what I do. I'm not afraid of it. I'm just a little surprised it happened to me because I'm usually watching all the time. … This sitting around is driving me crazy."

gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com