May 30, 2006
Tift County - You've probably been told that when it's lightning, the safest place for you to be is indoors. But what do you do when the lightning makes its way inside?
"We were in our bedroom when we heard a large 'boom,'" said Sandra Abdelhaq, as she takes us back to the night when a home in the Taylor Ridge Subdivision in Tifton would burn to pieces.
"We walked out of the bedroom, and smelled smoke. I said, 'honey, I think someone's house is on fire,'" Abdelhaq said, not yet realizing that that house, would be her own.
"We ran down the hall and the other side of our house was in blazes," says Sandra. She ran outside to get help. Her husband and a neighbor dialed 911.
Firefighters, putting out another probable lightning fire at this house on Pickett Street in Ty Ty, rushed to the home on Edgewater Drive, but by the time they arrived, it was too late.
Chief Mike Flippo says, "A bolt of lightning, they say is as hot as the surface of the sun."
That's not hard to believe. This half a million dollar home, is now nothing more than a pile of rubble. Sandra says, "This was our mansion. This was our dream home." When asked, 'What's it like seeing it like this?' She says, "It's painful. It's devastating."
Chief Flippo says, "I've seen a lot of lightning strikes through the years and there's one thing that you can count one, is that they're unpredictable."
And unforgettable, but Sandra is going to try.
A fire Hydrant across the street from the home was dry. Chief Flippo says there were other working hydrants just down the street that firefighters used.
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