FIRED BY LIGHTNING

Hokitika Guardian, 26 September 1928, Page 1

FIRED BY LIGHTNING

TWO BUILDINGS STRUCK. (By Telegraph—Press Association). < NEW PLYMOUTH, Sept. 25. An,, electrical/* storm of • exceptional severity visited New Plymouth this afternoon and evening, accompanied by heavy hail showers. Lightning struck the factory of Jones and Sandford, and a private house next door, and set fire, to both. The fire brigade was called out, hut the flames were extinguished with chemicals before it arrived. The lightning entered the factory by flaming along an iron conduit pipe carrying power lines and ignited a pbt of French, polish, which spread the flames in straw packing, ' Twelve motors, driving individual machines, blazed like halls of fire, and one workman temporarily w « blinded. The same flash struck the steel guy ropes of a wireless set at the house next door; smashed the guy and also the aerial, and then passed along a clothes line and struck the corner, of the house, tearing off a hoard, striking the wall inside and igniting rafters. About' one hundred telephones in various parts of the town were put out of commission, and numbers of fuses were blown. Another strange prank by the lightning as to crack a pane in a window in the centre of the town. The wind was sufficiently strong to blow in several windows at Fitzroy Methodist School,, hut in 'this the heavy hailstorms may have assisted.