June 6, 2007

Published in Wake Forest, NC

            The first alarm about a lightning strike was for the house at 612 Middle Bridge Road in the Deacon’s Ridge subdivision owned by Sean and Natalie Lynch. Both Station #1 and Station #2 responded and found, as Chief Jerry Swift said, that lightning had come into the house damaging some electronic devices.

            But while the firemen from both stations were checking out the house, making sure there was nothing smoldering, a second alarm came in.

            This was from Michael and Cassandra White’s house at 3700 Coach Lantern Ave. in the St. Andrews subdivision on Burlington Mills Road, and it had to be answered by the Rolesville Fire Department. “Had the Forestville Road firehouse been in operation, we would have had a unit respond immediately,” Swift said.

            “Lightning ran in on the natural gas line and got up under the house where the flex line is and ruptured there,” Rolesville Fire Chief Rodney Privette said. “The crawl space was full of smoke.” If there had been no one home, it would have been much worse, he added. Privette also said his department has had several fires started by lightning hitting a natural gas line.

            Back in Wake Forest, firemen finished up at their first call, then responded to an alarm that a building at 136 W. Sycamore Ave. on the Wake Forest Elementary School campus, had been hit by lightning. “There was not much to this one,” Swift said, but firemen from both stations went on the call because of the location.

            Shortly afterward, it was again trucks from both stations that dashed to Bowling Green subdivision on Jones Dairy Road for a lightning strike that sparked a fire in a house at 1412 Green Mountain Drive. They found a small fire in the basement of the house that is still owned by St. Lawrence Homes, the builder.

            There was no rest because there were two more fire calls that afternoon where trucks from both stations responded. A reported apartment fire at 815 Stadium Drive, the North Forest Apartment complex, turned out to be a malfunctioning water heater. The last call in the series was from an accidental alarm activation at a business on Unicon Drive in the South Forest Business Park off Burlington Mills Road near Capital Boulevard.

            Altogether on Sunday, Swift said, Station #1 responded to 13 incidents and Station #2 responded to seven. “This is becoming a typical day for Wake Forest firefighters. It only enforces the need for more firehouses and personnel to handle the incidents.”