Lightning Strikes

Walnut Tree Village

By Andrew Gorosko

About 50 town firemen responded on Tuesday evening to a fire which caused an estimated $125,000 in property damage at Walnut Tree Village, an elderly housing complex on Walnut Tree Hill Road in Sandy Hook.

Sandy Hook Fire Chief Bill Halstead said a lightning strike during a thunderstorm about 6:30 pm caused the fire, which damaged two condominium units on St George’s Place, a private street within the complex.

Damaged were Unit 30, which is occupied by Susan McLachlan, and Unit 31, which is occupied by Ida Val. Ms McLachlan was home at the time of the lightning strike, and Ms Val was away, according to Chief Halstead. There were no injuries in the fire, the fire chief said.

Lightning struck a cupola and the roof atop the multi-unit building that holds the condos, Chief Halstead said. Sandy Hook, Newtown Hook & Ladder, and Hawleyville firefighters went to the scene, as did ambulance staffers. Firemen used Hook & Ladder’s aerial unit at the blaze.  

The extensive fire burned within the firewall structure located between Units 30 and 31. Part of the roof and some interior wall and ceiling panels will be need to be replaced, requiring what will probably be several weeks of repair work, the fire chief said. The two burned units are not habitable and their residents are staying elsewhere, he said. Residents living in other units in the same building will be able to remain in their quarters.

The fire proved to be a difficult blaze to get to and a difficult fire to fight due to the confined areas within which it burned, the fire chief said. Firemen had to enter the tight attic spaces of the building to fight the blaze. Firefighters broke holes through the roof to ventilate the building and let built-up heat escape.

“It was time consuming and labor intensive,” Chief Halstead said of the work to extinguish the blaze. Interior walls had to be opened up and pulled apart to gain access to the fire, he said. “We had to rip the walls out to get to the fire,” he said. It took at least one hour to put out the fire, he said.

The Tuesday evening fire is the only serious fire which has occurred at Walnut Tree Village, Chief Halstead said. The 80-unit condo complex built by Walnut Tree Developers opened in the mid-1990s. It is being expanded into a 190-unit complex.

Ironically, as firemen were working to put out the fire, an overarching rainbow appeared in the sky over Sandy Hook Center, observers said.