| Submit your comments on this article |
| -Short Attention Span Theater- |
| Woman Hit By Lightning While Praying |
| 2006-05-31 |
| DAPHNE, Ala. -- Worried about the safety of her family during a stormy Memorial Day trip to the beach, Clara Jean Brown stood in her kitchen and prayed for their safe return as a strong thunderstorm rumbled through Baldwin County, Alabama. But while she prayed, lightning suddenly exploded, blowing through the linoleum and leaving a blackened area on the concrete. Brown wound up on the floor, dazed and disoriented by the blast but otherwise uninjured. She said 'Amen' and the room was engulfed in a huge ball of fire. The 65-year-old Brown said she is blessed to be alive. Firefighters said its likely she was hit by a bolt of lightning that apparently struck outside and traveled into the house yesterday afternoon. She was found lying on the floor by her 14-year-old granddaughter. Fire officials think the lightning likely struck across the street from the couple's home and traveled into the house through a water line. The lightning continued into the couple's backyard and ripped open a small trench. A family member said he will no longer assume it is safe to be indoors during a lightning strike. Dime-sized hail and wind gusts of up to 45 miles-per-hour moved across coastal Baldwin County. As much as three inches of rain fell in some areas in three hours. |
| Posted by:john |
| #3 Frank, that's why my old TV antenna is still on the roof, though I've had cable for about 20 years. That TV antenna cable attaches to a 3-foot copper ground rod pounded almost all the way into the ground. :-D |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-05-31 23:27 |
| #2 or run a big friggin copper ground rod deep in mama earth |
| Posted by: Frank G 2006-05-31 21:29 |
| #1 When I was a firefighter, I saw some really weird lightning strike paths. Probably the "best" one (witnessed) was in an older neighborhood with huge (50-100-foot) trees all over the place. A ball of lightning shot down the street, knocking out any homeowners' driveway lamps while leaving taller county streetlights alone and hitting not one tree. It hung a left, went underground in a lady's paved driveway, hit a pipe, traveled through the pipe into the house to the sump pump, blew out the sump pump and traveled around the pipe along the wall to a sink, where it discharged. The explosion knocked a whole bunch of decorative glass bottles off the kitchen window upstairs and scared the hell out of the female homeowner, who was home alone, sitting in a tub full of water, taking a bath in a thunderstorm. (Darwin, phone home.) The worst part of it was, the previous year lightning had also struck the house, coming out through an electrical socket and narrowly missing her teenage daughter. There's a sign in there someplace. Me, I'd MOVE. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2006-05-31 21:02 |