The older of two boys hit by lightning is drifting in and out of consciousness as he lies in a hospital bed in critical condition, the boy's father said Thursday.

Oral Caines said he's told his six-year-old son Kyus, "'I wish it was me instead of you." Kyus tries to speak back but can't yet, he said.

Doctors haven't told him yet how the lightning may have affected his son, he said.

"There's basically three types of injuries of injuries that you can sustain after you've been hit by lightning," Dr. Seen Chung of the Hospital for Sick Children had told reporters earlier in a general talk about lightning injuries.

"The first is the blunt force of being hit by the lightning, the second is like an electrical injury and the third a thermal or heat injury."

The youngest boy struck by a freak lightning bolt in Brampton, Ont. has had his condition upgraded to serious from critical. Oral said the boy has played occasionally with his children, but he didn't know the child.

Dulce Caines, Oral's wife, remains in a Brampton hospital on Thursday, where she is described as being in fair and stable condition in the intensive care unit. Oral said she's anxious to come visit Kyus, but it isn't clear when she'll be ready to leave hospital.

Both boys are at Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children.

Kyus likes dinosaurs, riding his bike and scooter and playing cards, Oral said.

This whole incident has left him "devastated," he said. "You would never think that," about lightning blasting a loved one, "but things happen," Oral said.

A terrifying scene

A man who rushed to help the victims said he came upon a "terrifying" scene.

"I heard a very loud noise that actually really startled me," Allan Hughes told CTV's Canada AM.

"I went outside to see whether the lightning hit my backyard or around there, and then I heard a woman screaming 'oh my God, call 911.' So naturally I did and I threw my shoes on and I hopped the fence and I ran to the scene."

After calling 911, Hughes immediately began to help, administering CPR to one of the two boys for about 30 seconds.

Hughes was trying to help Kyus, the older boy.

"I've never actually given CPR before, so naturally I was a little shaky, a little shocked and I didn't want to potentially do something wrong and cause damage," he said.

Hughes estimates it was less than two minutes before paramedics arrived at the scene to help. In that time, he said there was little response from the child.

"He was practically naked from the hits, and his eyes were wide open and he was just absolutely lifeless. There was just nothing there, it was terrifying," he said.

The first lightning bolt struck at about 2:20 p.m., hitting Kyus who was sitting on the grass, and his mother, and leaving a singed hole in the turf.

The four-year-old who was nearby with a babysitter, was hit by a secondary bolt.

Peel regional police Const. Adam Minnion told ctvtoronto.ca on Wednesday that all three were rushed to Brampton Civic Hospital.

The GTA and southern Ontario have dealt with unsettled and sometimes severe weather for the past several days.

The strikes came on a day where southern Ontario was under no extreme weather alerts. However, doppler radar did show some isolated thunderstorm activity in the GTA on Wednesday.

Hughes said the storm "came out of absolutely nowhere," which could explain why the children were still on the soccer field when the storm passed overhead.

Environment Canada meteorologist Geoff Coulson said lightning can strike up to 17 kilometres away from a storm, giving the appearance it came from out of the blue.

The storm cell in the Brampton area on Wednesday only produced about 15 to 20 lightning bolts, but Coulson said sometimes one can be too many.

With a report from CTV's Jim Junkin and files from The Canadian Press