OAKDALE--It's not often that fire departments have to respond to the chief's house for a call, but on Thursday that's exactly what happened.
Around 10:15 a.m. a lightning strike hit the home of Chesterfield Fire Department Chief Kevin Truex. His daughter was in the East Lake Road home in the Oakdale section of Montville at the time, but instead of calling 911 she called her father.
"Not fun when it's your house you're responding to," Truex told FOX 61 about getting that scary call. "She told me she had just gotten electrocuted, and I said 'What's going on?' and she said 'Well, the house got hit by lightning.'"
The 20-year-old woman apparently went outside during the storm to make sure a drain in the driveway was working, and she put her hand on a column on the porch when lightning struck nearby. They think it hit in the backyard and traveled through an electrical cable that goes underground.
"It's just a best guess I mean when you look at the house and there's no physical damage sign of a lightning strike but you know you have somebody telling you hey very clearly I saw that flash and I felt the electric shock go through me," Truex explained about what he believes happened.
The woman was taken to the hospital due to some numbness in her arm. She was treated and then released and will be okay.
The family plans to hire an electrician to make sure everything is working properly in the home, and the strike didn't cause any damage.
Truex said, "It may cost a couple hundred dollars to have the electrician come in, but considering what we could have had happen, I'll take that any day."
