DE PERE, Wis. (WFRV) – A quiet Sunday evening was spent watching television for many residents at the Rockland apartments in De Pere. It was a rainy day, and what seemed like a mild thunderstorm. Until it erupted.
“A huge flash, and the largest bang, crash, whatever you want to call it, that I’ve ever heard,” resident Kimberly Hansen said. “And it scared the crap out of all of us.”
A lightning bolt left a five inch gash in the roof, and the residents startled as could be.
“We just got a hole in the roof,” Hansen said. “I had never heard lightning that loud before, and it shook the whole building. And my daughter and I said, ‘That must have been close.’ And I guess it was.”
All 24 residents had to evacuate the apartment. They did not lose power, but the lightning bolt possibly interfered with smoke alarms, which had just been checked weeks prior, according to residents and De Pere Fire and Rescue.
“I was going through mail, and I saw the lightning and it almost felt like it hit the [television] screen, so I jumped and turned the television off and was like ‘wow,’” Janeen Sweis said. “I’ve seen lightning but that was really close. So close that it put a hole in the roof.”
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Sweis said that she could even feel the bolt as it struck.
“I thought it hit the window, it was so loud,” she said. “It was really close because it was like a bolt of light, like it hit the screen.”
Power had to be shut off to prevent risk of electrical fire, and residents are only allowed to return to their apartments to gather necessities, and will not be back full time until cleared by Wisconsin Public Services and an electrician.
“They were asked that they would follow up with the electrician to make sure that they would go through the building and make sure there isn’t any extensive damage from the lightning strike,” De Pere Fire and Rescue Lt. Del Zuleger said. “The structure could burn with it being a wood frame construction.”
While rare, this is far from the first lightning strike the department has dealt with, and more could be on the way this summer.
“They are rare but they do happen, it happens a handful of times,” Zuleger said. “It’s just kind of a chance, lightning strikes where it wants to strike.”
Zuleger is using this call as an opportunity to remind people that they need to evacuate their residences anytime an alarm goes off or fails to, with no second guessing about it.
“When the smoke alarms do go off or the fire alarms do go off, evacuate the building right away, whether you think there’s a fire or not, just clear the building and let the firefighters clear the building and let you back in,” he said.
