Strong Storms Strike Va., Sparking at Least Two Fires

April 27--It was the third time the church steeple had been hit by lightning, but the first time there was a fire, church members said.

The fire in the steeple at River Bend Baptist Church was one of two lightning-caused fires in the region Thursday morning as a nasty string of storms rolled through.

"Lightning usually strikes the tallest object around," said David Gaffin, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn. "Lightning is electric -- it may have created a spark and heated up the area a little bit."

Gaffin said cloud-to-ground lightning can be seen all year, but the big storm system that moved through the Tri-Cities on Thursday morning caused a lot of lightning as well. More scattered storms are expected throughout the weekend, he said.

Gaffin said he couldn't speculate as to what caused either the church fire or a fire at a home on Spring Valley Circle in Gate City, Va., around the same time Thursday.

No one was hurt in either fire, although nearly a dozen puppies died in the Gate City blaze, according to WJHL Channel 11. The owners of the home are registered breeders in Scott County, and firefighters were able to save only eight or 10 puppies who were in the basement when the fire started, they told a WJHL Channel 11 reporter.

The church fire on River Bend Road was sparked about 10 a.m., and firefighters called to the church were able to quickly extinguish the blaze, which was pouring from the bell tower beneath the steeple, said Chris Carrier, chief engineer for the Hickory Tree Volunteer Fire Department.

"Most of the damage was unfortunately water damage," he said. "The steeple was burnt pretty much off but the fire didn't get into the attic or any other areas of the church."

Firefighters believed lightning caused the fire because the building is on a hill, and nothing else could have caused it, he said. Still, fires caused by lightning aren't as common as people think, he said.

"Sometimes it's reported [as a lightning fire] but not determined to be," Carrier said, adding that the Sullivan County Sheriff's Office investigates each fire in the county and ultimately determines the cause.

A neighbor who lives across the road from the fire said he was reading in his chair when he heard a loud boom and saw a flash of light.

"I thought it hit close," Eddie Smithson said of the lightning. "But I didn't see anything, and then about 30 minutes later I saw the firefighters and saw the smoke and fire. It sure made a loud bang and a ball of fire."

Church caretaker Eugene Osborne went to the church shortly after the lightning hit, because he saw from a device in his home that the security alarm at the church had been tripped.

He said he didn't see any smoke at first, and went about the business of resetting the alarm, checking the doors and checking the lights. Some of the lights didn't work, he said, and he smelled hot wires near the fuse box.

About that time, he got a call on his cell phone from his wife, Ora Lee, who could see smoke rising from the church from their home on River Bend Road.

"It made me nervous, because I thought of him there with the smoke," Ora Lee Osborne said. "It could've burned the whole church down before anyone else saw it."

Eugene Osborne said the church has been hit by lightning twice before -- once in the 1970s and again in the 1980s. Neither of those strikes caused serious damage, he said.

And although it will take a while before the steeple can be replaced, Osborne said, that won't slow the church down.

"Good Lord willing, we'll have services in the fellowship hall on Sunday," he said.

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