Twelve years ago today NewMexiKen made the round trip from Northern Virginia to Blacksburg to bring Jason, official youngest son of NewMexiKen, home from Virginia Tech for the summer. It was about a 550 mile drive, so not long after I got home from dropping Jason and his stuff off, I collapsed in my Arlington townhouse’s second floor bedroom; exhausted, but not really asleep.
As I lay there dozing on-and-off a little after nine a thunderstorm blew in. I began listening to it, the lightning closer and the thunder right behind and increasingly loud. I was counting the seconds to see how far away the strikes were, when, BAM, the lightning and thunder came in the same instant.
“Wow! That was close.”
I got up to look out the back and front windows to see which large tree it had hit. Not the one in the back open space. Not the even bigger and older one across the street. Odd I thought. It had to be that close.
I went down the two stories to the basement to reset the circuit breakers that had popped. Coming back through, I began the inventory of damaged electronic gear. No phones worked. The TV was screwy and the VCR was blasted. Sitting in the living room I heard a loud static-like sound upstairs and concluded the clock radio had come on, but didn’t work, or maybe the station was off the air. I headed back up, but the noise wasn’t coming from the radio. I started back down again, confused.
Above the stairway landing was a pull-down stepladder to the attic. As I passed—for the third time since the lightning strike—I looked up. Through the seam around the molding I could see what was making the crinkly sound. Flames!
It was a townhouse with a common attic so I immediately alerted neighbors on both sides and had one of them call the fire department (remember, my phones didn’t work). Foolishly perhaps (though there was no smoke), I went back in to get my wallet and car keys from the top of the bureau in the bedroom upstairs. I also grabbed a couple of envelopes with utility payments—but not my work ID (which I later thought was an interesting psychology).
The nearest fire station was only a few blocks down the street but they were already out on a call. It was ten minutes before the next nearest engine company arrived. You think waiting for a computer to load a program or waiting for a red light to change is long? Try standing in the pouring rain waiting for the fire trucks when your house is on fire.
The firemen arrived, vented the attic, went out of their way to protect some of my furniture, and stopped the fire just before the slate roof crashed through the burned-out attic and destroyed the place top down. Even so there was water and smoke damage all the way down to the basement (water gets into walls and runs across ceilings). It took $50,000 and several months to rebuild the place (I was a renter, but I did return after it was rebuilt). State Farm handled my personal claim with courtesy and generosity. I got a lot of new stuff.
The fire inspector the next morning told me that lightning strikes are about 2000° F. It hit about 20 feet from my bed.
That’s quite a tale. My own dislike of electrical storms started the day I waited with a friend for the vet to come and treat her pony that was struck by lightning but not killed. It was a long forty-five minutes and the pony had to be put down since horses evidently don’t recover well from being struck. Colorado is very high in the number of lightning strikes so I worry about the horses during storms even though we are surrounded by hilltops on three sides.
Many years ago, I was in a phone booth (remember them?) located on a street corner, talking to my girlfriend while another friend waited for me in a car nearby. One of those great, NM summer storms rolled in and was beginning to make some real noise. Suddenly, as you wrote, BAM! The booth was struck by lightening and lit up like one of those old Kodak flash cubes. I’ll never forget the look on my friend’s face, open-mouthed, wide-eyed shock. The phone died in my hand, I wasn’t touching anything but the receiver, I was wearing rubber flip-flops which must have grounded me, and I was completely unhurt.
Two words: Lightning Rod
There was something about lightning rods at the time but I can’t remember. It didn’t work, or they didn’t have them for some reason, or whatever. It’s a huge complex of townhouses built during WWII.
I had a friend who, at the age of 19, was struck by lightening while in a Tucson park. He had been an enormously popular guy in high school, intelligent and vivacious. After the lightening, he became a man with a frustrated mind inside a burned out body. He lived in a nursing home for decades until he died when he was about 50. You were lucky it was only your attic. But, as official younger sister or NewMexiKen, I am very happy you were awake and aware at the time.