At 10:30 PM on June 10th, the Chesapeake Fire Department received numerous calls for heavy smoke in the area of Great Bridge Blvd. Arriving units discovered a large, single story church with 50% fire involvement.
The alarm was escalated to two alarms immediately and an effort was mounted to cut off the fire's travel. The effort was successful. Damage estimates are at $1,000,000.
The cause was a lightning strike that occurred approx 2 hours earlier during an intense storm. The lightning apparently disabled the automatic alarm system in the church.
