Apparently lightning has no problem striking the same street twice.
A pair of homes on one London street were damaged by lightning Saturday night, fire officials say, as a nasty storm hammered the city and lit up the sky for hours.
“One got nailed. The other got grazed,” Dave Beecroft, a platoon chief with London Fire Department, said of the two houses on Everglade Cr. in London’s Oakridge neighbourhood.
Firefighters were called to a home at 572 Everglade at about 9:15 p.m. following a direct lightning strike that started a small fire.
The bolt, Beecroft says, appears to have struck the roof’s northwest corner, snaking around the aluminum soffit and fascia before “entering through the hydro service line.”
While fire crews were at that home, a resident several doors away reported smoke in her kitchen.
Given the unpredictable nature of lightning, Beecroft said it’s hard to know exactly what happened, noting it’s possible the original direct strike may have followed power lines into the second home.
“Who knows? It’s totally unpredictable.”
Greg Braam, who owns the house at 572 Everglade, was in the basement with his wife when the bolt hit – blowing open a nearby electrical panel’s door.
The bolt also blew out of the wall in their daughter’s bedroom, leaving a large hole just inches from where she was sleeping.
The house is left with no water, gas or hydro. While he wouldn’t guess on repair costs, Braam has been told the entire electrical system likely needs to be replaced.
No one was injured in the direct strike – but plenty of people were rattled.
Neighbour Jeff Hare was lifting his one-year-old child out of a vehicle, having just returned from the cottage, when the bolt struck next door.
As firefighters milled about in the dark about an hour later, Hare struggled to describe the stunning experience.
“It was 15, 20 feet from me. That was scary,” he said. “You can’t explain it. It’s one of the loudest pops I’ve ever heard.”
Beecroft said there were several “minor strikes” on houses in London Saturday night.
While London Hydro said there were very few outages in the city, the storm left thousands in the region in the dark.
Hydro One said 24,000 customers were in the dark because of high winds, which reportedly reached 100 kilometres/hour, and of lightning striking transformers and other equipment.
One of the hardest-hit spots was Lambton County, where 2,500 were without power. A few hundred in Strathroy were also affected.
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via The London Free Press.
