Lightning strike blasts homes

A phone charger damaged by the lightning storm. Photo / Alan Gibson

Residents of a Whakatane suburb were left thunderstruck and in the dark last night after lightning cut power to several homes.

Coastlands resident Morgan Rehu said he was sitting at the table with his children when lightning struck his Ohuirehe Rd house shortly after 5pm, blowing his phone cables and filling his darkened house with smoke.

"It was very loud, deafeningly loud, but powerful - you could definitely feel the electricity around the house. It was quick too, and pretty scary."

Appliances that were hooked up to his phone line, including a Sky decoder, a laptop computer and a new television, were instantly destroyed.

"I had to open the door to get some of the smoke out. My kids had to go to their grandmother's; they were just freaked out by it."

Mr Rehu's neighbour Bruce Bryenton heard a loud thunderclap before a strike blew his phone plug out of its wall socket.

"I was just sitting there having a beer and playing on the laptop, then all of a sudden there was an almighty flash, followed by the biggest crack I've ever heard in my life.

"It was absolutely horrendous, and it blew everything up. Both computers went off - they're dead now." His anti-power-surge devices were destroyed.

A lineman working to restore power to a handful of Landscape Rd houses uncovered a fuse box from the ground to find the wires had been fried.

A nearby resident, who did not want to be named, said his ears were left ringing by a strike that hit his house, blasting a hole in its weatherboards and blowing out its meter box.

"It was a big bang. I couldn't hear for quite a while. There was a bit of light smoke in the house afterwards."