Family home damaged after lightning bolt hits their property

A family says they’ve 'lost everything' in a devastating fire caused by lightning hitting their house.

Transcript

00:00The neighbour across the road come and knocked on the door and he's the one that told us there's a little

00:03fire on your roof. Yeah. We went out and had a look and there was. So I came upstairs and opened the

00:08attic hatch and saw the black thick smoke just pilling out of the hatch. Yeah. And he was just

00:15get everybody out. So I got my daughter and the dog, got her out into the car, went out to the

00:20missus who was on the phone to the fire brigade at the time and we started pounding on the neighbours

00:23doors because none of them had the slightest idea what was going on. So we knocked on all the doors

00:28and got everybody out and made sure everyone was safe. How many houses is it affected then Steve?

00:33Well we had to evacuate six because there's six that are connected these terrace houses. Yeah.

00:38But it's four houses that have been affected. There's only three of them because one's empty.

00:43Yeah. So there's us, Michael and Jean's is empty and then there's Sarah's and then there's number

00:4811 as well. Yeah. And I mean we're in your daughter's room aren't we? And how is she

00:54coping with it all? Is she kind of, is she staying strong with it or is she having nightmares?

00:58You know what I mean? She's staying strong at the moment. She's had a few outbursts like you know

01:04to be expected. It's still shock at the moment to be honest with you. Yeah. I think staying with

01:08family's helping because she's got her cousins to play with so it's keeping her mind occupied.

01:12But yeah it's the thought of losing all of her stuff. She's lost everything. Yeah. People don't

01:18realise, I mean you've got the issue, you've got the fire damage but then obviously the fire

01:22brigade do their great work and put it out so the whole thing doesn't burn down. But that leaves

01:28its own. Trail of destruction with the water doesn't it? Yeah the water damage, it's amazing

01:32where it goes to. You just don't, we came in and it was just pouring everywhere. Yeah. We were

01:38allowed to come back in and get some stuff about one o'clock in the morning. Come and get a few

01:41bare essentials and water was just running down the walls coming out of the light switches and

01:46thinking yeah it was everywhere.