Lightning Strike

On Friday evening, 5 October, Tony and I were relaxing in the lounge watching TV and doing a crossword.  At around 5.20pm we heard a huge bang and two of our three small windows exploded and glass flew in two directions - into the lounge and out into the courtyard.  The window in the large sliding door cracked from top to bottom.  The TV died.  Naturally, we both jumped to our feet and rushed outside to see what had happened.

One of the tall pin oaks (over 20m in height) at the opposite side of the street had been hit by lightning and the main trunk, presumably full of sap in the springtime, had literally exploded.  The main part of the tree was now blocking the road and the top part had come to rest on the wall surrounding our swimming pool.  Large balks of splintered timber, pieces of bricks, mortar, bark, twigs and leaves were all over our garden and in the swimming pool. Some of these huge bits of splintered tree over 2m long had traveled up to 150m or so and had knocked down garden walls. The smaller pieces were around by the thousand but all were sharp, jagged splinters. Anyone standing in the way at the time would have surely been killed.

People from neighbouring houses were coming outside to see the damage and the ones opposite us had fared much worse.  Their wall was badly broken in two places, another tree in their garden was flattened and the side of the house and roof were damaged.  Other houses all around had their windows broken.  We noticed large pieces of splintered timber were in our front garden, on the road and in other people’s gardens.

When we went back inside to check for more damage, we noticed that the ceiling light in the guest toilet had fallen to the floor and smashed into tiny pieces.  The fax/copier/ scanner was not working.  Luckily both computers were OK, we still had electricity and the burglar alarm was working.  We started sweeping up the broken glass and could not believe how far the tiny shards had traveled.  We were still picking up pieces a day later.

The local municipality and police were soon on the scene and the clean up began.  They started to clear the road and used a chain saw to make this more manageable.  The next morning they were back early and loaded the chopped up tree on to a lorry, bit by bit.  It took all day.

The glass companies were very busy replacing all the broken and cracked windows and the burglar alarm people were fixing the faulty systems.  All day we listened to the chain saw as the tree was cut into logs and then taken away. People from all around were also fetching nicely sawn logs on wheelbarrows – presumably for log fires. Many were also driving in their cars to look and the neighbours kept walking around the site.

It took us a long time to clear the pool.  We found whole bricks from the wall, as well as broken bricks and mortar.  There were lots of pieces of bark, some large and some small, as well as twigs and leaves. Strangely enough, the pieces of the tree which had been hit by lightning did not float. They all went to the bottom of the pool which made it doubly difficult to get them out. One piece of timber in the pool was 2m long and weighed about 20kg. There were other similar sized pieces that had come to rest by the side of the pool and stuck in the surrounding shrubs. For the next two days, the Kreepy Krauly kept getting indigestion on splinters of tree and bark and bits of masonry. It would stop and have to be cleared out. We also had to clear the surrounding brickwork around the pool and this took ages. 

We have lived here for 27 years and never seen or heard anything like it.  We consider ourselves lucky for a number of reasons:-
• we could have been hit by flying glass as we found large pieces under the chairs where we were sitting
• we could have been sitting on the chairs close  to the windows
• we could have been closing the curtains and been in direct fire of the flying glass
• we could have been in the guest toilet when the light fell
• we could have been driving home when the tree exploded
• we could have been in the garden when the large pieces of timber shards were flying about

It was a very scary experience but it could have been worse.  Everything is fixable and hopefully the insurance will cover the damage.  The main thing is that we are both unharmed and the house is still standing.

Sheila and Tony Bagnall (7 October 2007)