Halkirk woman tells of lightning shock
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A HALKIRK woman narrowly missed out on a shock at the weekend when lightning struck her holiday home and caused an oil tank to burst into flames.
Just after 9am on Saturday morning, lightning hit the gable end of Ola Todd’s unoccupied croft house in the Aird area of Bettyhill.
The huge electrical discharge seared through the circuits and up the outside fuel line to the heating oil storage tank, causing a fire that could be seen for several miles.
Mrs Todd, of Hoy Farm, told the Caithness Courier that if she had been running just 30 minutes earlier on the day she would have been inside when radiators and doors flew off walls and electrical sockets exploded.
"Just another half hour and I would have been there," she said. "I was just putting the finishing touches to the house for the start of the season.
"I was just about to head up when someone phoned me to say something had happened. They said that there had been an explosion."
The blaze from the fuel tank was quickly spotted, bringing the Bettyhill Fire and Rescue Unit to the scene within minutes.
The Tongue unit arrived shortly afterwards by which time the fire in the tank had been brought under control.
On entering the house the firefighters found a scene of devastation with doors off their hinges and plasterboard and strapping blasted off a seaward wall, as well as extensive damage to the electrical circuits.
"The fire brigade were there when I arrived," said Mrs Todd, who has been letting the detached house for the past 40 years.
"It had been a very stormy morning and lightning had hit the roof at the gable end of the house and just gone straight through all the copper pipes and out through the boiler along the fuel line before the tank exploded."
She said she was "quite shocked" by the damage done.
"There’s a hole in the roof and one of the trusses has cracked," she explained. "The whole of the interior electricity cables are blown from the sockets – there are just big holes left in the walls."
No-one was hurt in the incident although other houses nearby suffered damage after the massive voltage surged down the power cables from Mrs Todd’s house.
The sudden flash of lightning caused several problems in the area.
All electrical power was momentarily lost and irreparable damage was done to telephones, televisions and computers in the village and also a mile or so away in parts of Skerray.
The most substantial damage was done in three houses, the most seriously affected being 25 Aird, owned by Mrs Todd.
The neighbouring house, 22 Aird, was struck simultaneously.
The blast propelled a ceramic plate, which had been mounted on the wall, across the corridor in small pieces with sufficient force to mark the opposing door like a shotgun.
Crofter Billy Gordon (82), owner of the house, was standing a few feet away from that point of impact looking out the front window when a double electrical socket exploded off the wall and smoke from vaporised wiring spread through the house.
At 26 Aird one of William Sutherland’s televisions was damaged as was his telephone and electrical sockets. Electrical power was restored automatically to most of the village within a few seconds of the strike though a further outage of around an hour was necessary in the afternoon to enable power to be brought back to the most damaged area.
Street lights remained out of action in most of the village on Monday night.
