A HOUSE DESTROYED BY LIGHTNING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume II, Issue 139, 13 August 1881, Page 2

A HOUSE DESTROYED BY LIGHTNING.

On Tuesday evening last, about halfpast ten, a new house in Hawera, lately erected by Mr. Goldfinch, was struck by lightning, and completely shattered. In the course of the afternoon a window of the bed -room had been broken by the hail, and in consequence the bedding had been shifted into the sitting-room. This was done against the wishes of Mr. Goldfinch, who proposed to nail a cloth over the frame, and thus make shift for the night. "When the house was struck the whole of the bed-room was smashed to atoms, the window-frame thrown out into the garden, a hole some six or eight feet long made in the roof, and the whole of the front of the room blown to pieces. The windows of the other room were all shivered, the chimney knocked down — even some bricks in the arch being forced out. The wall-plates are broken in several places ; in fact, they are regularly ground to pieces in one or two parts. There is a large hole, two or three feet square, knocked through the wall near the fire-place ; the gable at the opposite end being also completely driven out. A stranger looking at the house would suppose that it had been shattered by a heavy explosion of gunpowder. It is scarcely credible that Mr. and Mrs. Goldfinch could have escaped from such a wreck uninjured. It is none the less true that such was the case, some of the displaced lining boards having sheltered them from the bricks and timber. The lightning must have passed close over the sleepers, who had made up their bed on the floor. It is almost impossible to say which way the lightning went out, or where it first struck; at one time, either before striking, orafter leaving the house, it struck and ran along the wire fence. Pieces of wood and splinters were picked up fully forty yards away, bricks and timber also being scattered for .yards in all directions, both to windward and to leeward of the house. Nearly all of Hawera went off to see the remains of the house on Wednesday and Thursday, and even yesterday visitors to town kept going to view the ruins. It is proposed to start a subscription in aid of Mr. and Mre. Goldfinch, whose means are not such as to be able to stand so heavy a loss. Mr. Walker, photographer, has left a copy of an excellent photograph of the building, as it appeared on the morning after the storm, on view at this office.