‘Terrifying’ lightning strikes hit two houses and more as thousands lose power from severe storms
(WFRV) – Severe thunderstorms ripped through northeastern Wisconsin early Tuesday, leaving a swath of widespread damage and power outages in its wake. Adding to the damage were at least four lightning strikes, two on houses and another two taking out a barn and transformer.
“Four, 4:30 this morning, we had a lightning strike that woke us up. We didn’t think much about it and went back to sleep. Then when I woke up, I couldn’t believe it,” Justin Mallman, who has lived in the township of Brothertown in Calumet Co. for three years, said.
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Mallman followed the smoke down the hall and into the laundry room as it became thicker.
“Kind of terrifying at first; you didn’t know if there was a fire in the wall,” he said. “There was lint all over. I pulled the dryer out and noticed the dryer venting was all blown apart, and the floor was all black behind the dryer, and the dryer was burnt on the back.”
He called the fire department, which investigated but found no fire. They told Mallman that the lightning strike likely hit a cable on the exterior of the house, frying most of his appliances.
A barn in the town of Chase also burned to the ground, and a transmitter box on Miramar Rd. in Green Bay caught fire. Both are believed to have been caused by lightning strikes.
A house on Misty Moon Way in De Pere also caught fire after a lightning strike, resulting in an estimated $30,000 in damage.
“It was a safety concern for our crews operating on the exterior of the residence holding metal objects such as axes and halogen bars and ladders during an electrical storm,” Lawrence Fire Department Chief Luke Pasterski said. “Our crews were able to safely identify where the fire was and extinguish it before it spread through the rest of the residence.”
Because of the added safety hazard working in the thunderstorm caused the firefighters, crews worked quickly to get off the roof and ladders, also preventing the fire from damaging more of the house.
“In my 30 years of doing this, this is the structure fire that I’ve been at that had the least amount of damage,” Pasterski said.
Tens of thousands of customers lost power across northeast Wisconsin, including more than 20,000 of Wisconsin Public Service’s.
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“Wisconsin Public Service crews are continuing to work quickly and safely to repair widespread power outages caused by this morning’s severe thunderstorms. Lightning, strong winds, the damaging winds we saw last night, those can all impact our customers and network,” spokesperson Matt Cullen said. “We anticipate that 98% of customers impacted by this morning’s severe storms will have power restored by the end of Tuesday.”
According to the WPS outage map, all but a few hundred customers had their power back by Tuesday evening.
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