I lived through one of the worst experiences of my life on Tuesday, April 28.
It took place when I was home alone, and the best way to describe it is in chronological order.
The time was about 3:15 p.m. and the weather was stormy in the Houston area for the second straight day. Rain was falling pretty hard at our property, and I was in the kitchen just doing something routine.
Then something unreal happened: There were back-to-back massive explosions accompanied by extremely bright light. The bangs were by far the loudest thing I have ever heard and the brightness was as if I was suddenly inside the sun.
I thought the house had blown up. I covered my ears and yelled.
In the aftermath, I stood completely still for several seconds, trying to process the situation and gather my wits. I then realized the house was intact and a tall oak tree just behind the back deck had received a double lightning strike.
I looked around through some windows and saw chunks of wood, bark and other debris all over the deck and the surrounding area. Bark was missing from about a 15-foot section of the targeted tree.
I noticed that the electricity had gone out in rooms on the south end of the house, but power was still on in the middle and north end. I went to the breaker box and discovered that the lightning strike had caused five breakers to trip.
Even at that moment when I was still in shock, I thought it was odd that only about a quarter of the breakers had been affected. I flipped them back on, and lights came back on, and I pondered what kind of weird power source could be so selective.
I finally stepped outside to check out the tree and see if there was any noticeable damage to the deck or anything else. I smelled something burning. I looked down from the deck and saw flames several feet high coming from the propane tank.
I was immediately terrified, and took action. My wife and our dog Scotty (the Scottie) were out of town visiting relatives, so it was just me and Lilah (our daughter’s Welsh Corgi who is staying with us).
I quickly gathered Lilah up, put her in my vehicle and moved it down the driveway, away from the house. Then I called Robbie Smith, the City of Houston’s fire chief and assistant chief of the Houston Rural Fire Department.
When Smith answered, I’m sure he heard the anxiety in my voice.
“I really need your help,” I said. “There’s flames coming from the propane tank!”
“We’ll be right there,” he said.
Our house is in Rural’s territory, so Smith and several other Rural firefighters responded. And they got to the scene quickly, possibly saving our house in the process.
After Smith witnessed the tall flames and extinguished them with a high-pressure hose, two other firefighters used a pair of hoses to douse the propane tank for several minutes, until Smith determined it had cooled enough.
Then Smith conducted an inspection and discovered that the flames had been emanating from two holes in a copper line connected to the tank. As unlikely as it seemed, it was apparent that the dang lightning had used the line as sort of a grounding rod, blown holes in it and ignited the escaping gas.
We were all like, “that’s crazy.”
What was also crazy is how the flames had scorched one of the 6×6 posts that support the deck. I was dismayed, but also very relieved that the fire hadn’t spread from there to the deck itself – and then the house.
You never want to see three fire trucks in your driveway or firefighters spraying water through high-pressure hoses on your property, but I felt a tremendous amount of gratitude about the outcome.
But there’s more.
Not long after the firefighters and their trucks left the scene, I realized the house had no running water. I went to the well house and found it didn’t have any power.
I called Intercounty Electric Cooperative for help, since they’re our provider.
Less than an hour later, a pair of nice young men showed up in an Intercounty truck and I explained the whole scenario. After they had said “wow” and “no way” multiple times, they explored the possibilities and found a dead breaker in the metal box mounted to the pole near the well house.
They replaced it and the water in the house ran again.
Two great responses in a period of a couple of hours. I was amazed by what was happening.
As the day progressed and I regained more and more of my normal senses, I found several other strange aspects of the lightning’s apparent selectiveness.
The lights in chandeliers over the island in the kitchen turned on and off, but the dimmer they’re connected to didn’t work.
The plug-in unit for our landline phone literally blew up, but the outlet it was plugged into showed no sign of fire or heat.
A surge protector in the part of the house that didn’t lose power was dead, along with the computer charger plugged into it. But again, the outlet it was connected to still worked and appeared normal.
It’s like the lightning went crawling through everything it could inside the house and made illogical, seemingly random decisions where it was going to cause damage or not. After having this bizarre first-hand experience, I’m now convinced that lightning is a much more mysterious entity than is conventionally recognized.
It’s like it’s alive.
Ironically, our daughter who lives in Springfield had called me that morning to share how a friend of hers was inside a Walmart in the city when giant hail began to fall and caused the ceiling to cave in. She said her friend told her people were “running around screaming” as the calamity unfolded, and that pretty much every car in the parking lot was “totaled.”
She also said the same about most of the cars in the parking lot at the apartment complex in northern Springfield she lives in.
I was like, “wow, that’s incredible!”
I had no idea at that point how weather was going to shake up my world that afternoon.
The following day, I was heading out of the driveway on my way to town at about 3:15 p.m. (that same dang time again) when an Intercounty truck showed up and its driver said, “I have to change out your meter; it’s not reading. Apparently your lightning strike killed it.”
“The one at the house?” I asked.
“Yes sir,” he said.
I was like, “Man, what next? Do you need me to be here?”
“No sir. It won’t take me but a few minutes.”
I thanked him and went back to what I was doing.
Anyway, when I say I “lived through” the experience, I mean that in a literal way. And I don’t take lightly the fact that me, Lilah and our house were all still around that night.
And I thank God that the whole thing wasn’t worse. What if I hadn’t been home? Our house would likely be gone. What if I hadn’t gone outside and noticed the flames? What if the tank had exploded?
And what if there weren’t fast and capable local responders to seek help from?
Praise God that it all went down the way it did, and the final story isn’t horrendous – or even tragic.
May lightning never strike near where you’re standing – especially twice.
