SETTLERS ALARMED

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 50, 27 August 1925, Page 6

SETTLERS ALARMED

THE THUNDERBOLT IN MARLBOROUGH ,

AWE-INSPIRING EXPERIENCES.

(BI TELESRAPH. —PRESS ASSOCIATION.)

BLENHEIM, This Day."

The narrow escapes of some Marlborough residents during the phenomenal thunderstorm on Tuesday afternoon pale into insignificance when contrasted with the awe-inspiring experience of William Blick and family, who 'reside in Old Renwick road. The thunderbolt burst with a shattering report, within a chain of the house, which was filled with' dust smoke, and fine ashes. Blick and a friend were standing on the back' verandah of the house watching the electrical display, which lit the sky with forked lightning, when they saw a large ball of fire drop from the clouds. It fell with incredible speed, and burst with a roar when some fifteen or twenty feet from the ground, wrapping the whoh house in an electrical flame, and filling the verandah with such a denso. cloud of smoke, dust, and fine particles of ash that the startled inhabitants of the house, who all rushed to the verandah, could not see one another.

G. Blick, son of Mr. Blick, had even a more startling experience, from which he has not yet fully recovered. He was feeding the horses, when the thunderbolt burst within a couple" of chains of where he was standing. -The concussion was so great that Blick' was thrown to his knees, while a yellow flame wrapped itself around his legs. On recovering his wits, he raced back to the house, where Mrs. Blick and the other members of the family were in a slato of collapse. Search of the vicinity has been made, but there is no sign of any solid substance embedded in the ground. Mr. Blick considers it wonderful that the house was 'not shattered to pieces, or at least set on fire.