My family has owned the house I now own for a bit more than 50 years. Built in 1957, it’s one of the older homes in the area. When we moved in, the land behind us was undeveloped–just an old, overgrown field that once had been farmland–and plantation land before that. An area across the street was also, at that time, undeveloped, consisting of what would become four home sites. All of that undeveloped land became developed between roughly 1963 and 1967. One of those four houses built across from us–a very tall two-story with a steeply pitched roof–was only months old when it was set afire by a bolt of lighting.
We had been out to the community pool, and after I had a taken a shower and was dressing in my room, I heard what sounded like a huge explosion in the front yard. I looked out, saw nothing. Minutes later, my mother, who was looking out the front living room window, called out that the house across the street was on fire. The flames were concentrated on the east end of the attic area, just below the roof line and near the triangular vent. The owner was attempting to hit the fire from the ground with a garden hose. Not likely, since the fire was about thirty feet above him. The fire department arrived, several pieces of equipment untimately, and so did the neighbors, a lot of people we had never seen, let alone met, standing all over the front lawns on our side of the street. The street was blocked, of course, but traffic was much lighter then. We watched as the firemen (yes, only men in those days) climbed up to the roof, chopping holes in it with their axes, while others fought the fire with water from the ground. After some time had passed, we could see the flames emerge from the other end of the attic. It had burned right through that space.
Eventually, the fire was extinguished, and the cast of thousands returned to their undamaged homes. The next day, curious kid that I was, I went over to see what had happened inside. The lady of the house let me and a couple of the other local kids in while she was on the phone. I saw that the fire had blackened and partially burned most of the roof trusses, but I don’t think the structure was compromised, and the ceiling in one of the rear bedrooms had fallen in, likely from heat and water.
Her phone conversation told me that, at the time of the lighting strike, she was standing at the front door, looking out the screen door, with one hand on the door handle and one foot on the metal threshold. She felt an electric charge go through her–harmlessly, of course. Her husband–poor guy–was on the “commode,” a word I expect she chose because of the young ears nearby, and was knocked off by the impact.
The house was repaired, of course, and those original owners sold it and moved probably after they’d lived there for no more than a year. We heard a story years ago that ball lightning had entered our house through the living room wall while the original owners still lived here, but who knows if that really happened. In recent years, I’ve heard the air crackle a few times just before lighting struck in quite close proximity, on one occasion, striking a neighbor’s large tree, which afterwards lost all of its leaves and was dead. He had it taken down. The house that was hit all those years ago has its fourth owner now and should have a lightning rod on the roof, still being the tallest house around. It doesn’t. I just recently told one of the current owners this story. She had been completely unaware of the fire all those years ago.