Walnut Tree Hill Road—

Lightning Strike Ignites

Sandy Hook House

By Andrew Gorosko

Firefighters’ swift response to a fire call coupled with the rupture of a basement water line combined to limit the damage caused after a lightning strike started a house fire on Walnut Tree Hill Road late on the morning of Wednesday, June 22.

Just before noon, next-door neighbors Julia Nable and Zoltan Csillag of 10 Walnut Tree Hill Road smelled smoke and heard an alarm sounding during a thunderstorm that had produced vivid lightning in the area, so they called local emergency services at 11:49 am to report the smell of smoke.

Ms Nable explained that a lightning bolt had rocketed through the area just before she and Mr Csillag smelled smoke.

On arriving, firefighters realized that the house next door, at 8-A Walnut Tree Hill Road, was afire, with smoke emanating from the structure and a smoke detector alarm sounding.

None of the four Grasso family members were home when the fire occurred at their house. There were no injuries in the blaze, which drew a multi-company response from local volunteer firefighters. Sandy Hook, Hook & Ladder, Hawleyville, and Botsford firefighters responded.

The Grassos’ pet dog, a rat terrier known as Farina, was uninjured in the fire.

The fire-damaged single-family 3,024-square-foot house, which was built in 2005, is the home of Michael Grasso and Mary LaPierre-Grasso and their two children.

Sandy Hook Fire Chief Bill Halstead, who also investigates fires as the town fire marshal, said that lightning had apparently struck the area, with the high voltage finding its way into the Grasso house’s basement where it caused a fire at the basement’s ceiling.

The intense jolt of electricity caused the solder on a copper water pipe to melt, rupturing the pipe and releasing its pressurized water, helping to retard the basement fire’s advance into the house, he said. The fire thus remained relatively small in the basement, but created heavy smoke conditions there, he said.

Chief Halstead said his investigation indicated that the lighting strike had followed some wiring into the basement where the burst of electricity ignited the fire. A damage estimate was not available.

“It could have been a lot worse,” Ms Nable said.