LIGHTNING BOLT

Hokitika Guardian, 29 May 1930, Page 6

LIGHTNING BOLT

DAMAGE DONE TO RESIDENCE

(By Telegraph—Press Association)

INVERCARGILL, May 28,

A particularly vivid flash oT lightning startled many Invercargill residents about 11 o’clock this morning. The area adjacent to J. W. Smith’s residence, Hollywood Terrace, Gladstone, received- the full force of the bolt, and was extensively damaged as a result. The main force of the holt was attracted, apparently, by a high wireless aerial mast, and was received by the lawn in front of Smith’s residence, since the aeral wires were entirely burnt up, and a mass of soft earth was scattered all over a nearby concrete walk.

Branches of the bolt jumped all over the section, sol.d concrete paths being torn up in several places. The bulb or the electric light overhanging the tennis court was smashed into atoms, as were several windows on all sides or the house.

The damage was not confined in, this one section, since similar wreckage was noticed in all of the houses in f! o near neighbourhood, and even iti o p or two residences'on North Bond. Scare hundreds of yards away all of the teie-., phone and electric light systems were' put out of comm,is; ion. •

The holt struck with n loud “crack.” wide]; was described by one of the members of Smith’s household as a ‘terrible noise, hut 1 can’t tell you what it was.ljke.” This exolosiou was accompanied by a blinding flash. which was repeated in a lesser degree in several of the adjacent houses, in wlii'h the, electricity travelled along the telephone wires and ruined the actual instruments.