Lightning Destroys Home

Flames ripped through a Woolmarket home this morning which officials say sparked from lightning.
Three of the four family members were at the house off Shriners Boulevard at the time of the strike and managed to escape without injury. They watched helplessly as their home burned to the ground.
James Brown could do nothing more than standby and watch as flames devoured the home he built 28 years ago with his own hands. He and his family managed to escape the fire with only the clothes on their backs and their cell phones. “Smelled like something charred, like a fireplace had been burning but was out. I knew something wasn’t right until I smelled that smoke. I knew we had a fire then and then looking further, I couldn’t do anything with the fire at that point,” said Brown.
Brown immediately called 9-1-1 and rushed his wife, daughter and dog out of their burning home. The family heard an enormous boom and the rest was Mother Nature. “We weren’t cooking anything. Lightning hit the house and it set a fire in the attic is what happened,” said Brown.
Crews sprayed thousands of gallons of water on the home. The toughest part of this house fire, the flames raging through the ceiling and the second floor. Harrison County Fire Chief Pat Sullivan said, “We had to make a defensive attack, go to the outside and try to keep it, but we’ve been in and outside back and forth trying to knock the fire out but there’s a large amount of fire inside in between the floors and the attic area.”
Thanks to Brown’s quick thinking, he managed to alert his family and help them evacuate the home, calling the fire department for help as smoke alarms beeped throughout the house. “All of those things in unison are the right thing to do, but with lightning, lightning is very, very powerful and with the amount of fire that he had in the attic when he finally discovered it, it was pretty involved up there,” said Chief Sullivan.
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