LIGHTNING DURING STORM STARTS FIRES.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18576, 26 September 1928, Page 6

LIGHTNING DURING STORM STARTS FIRES.

Per Press Association. NEW PLYMOUTH, September 25. An electrical storm of exceptional severity visited New Plymouth this afternoon and evening, accompanied by heavy hail showers. Lightning struck the factory of Jones and Sandford and a private house next door and set fire to both. The brigade was called out but the flames were extinguished with chemicals before it arrived. Lightning entered the factory by flaming along an iron conduit pipe carrying power lines, and ignited a pot of French polish, which spread the flames in straw packing. Twelve motors driving individual machines blazed like balls of fire, and one workman was temporarily blinded. The same flash struck the steel guyropes of the wireless at a house next door, smashed the guy and also the aerial, passed along a clothes line and struck a corner of the house, tearing off a board, striking a wall inside and igniting the rafters. About a hundred telephones in various parts of the town were put out of commission, and numbers of fuses were blown. Another strange prank by lightning was to crack a pane in a window in the centre of the town. The wind was sufficiently strong to blow in several windows at the Fitzroy Methodist School, but in this heavy hailstones may have assisted.