Lightning strike leaves Fern Ridge residents picking up pieces

Scott Swanson

Ron and Connie Womack were in a bedroom of their home near the crest of Fern Ridge Monday morning, Aug. 3, when they got the distinct sense that a storm was looming.

Connie was sitting near the window – not on the porch as she usually does in the summer mornings.

Suddenly, about 10 a.m., they heard a deafening explosion outside. Lightning had hit a tall Douglas fir about 100 feet from their house.

“Boy, I’m telling you, it sounded just like a sonic jet boom,” Ron said. “It had kind of a funny sound at the end of it, kind of like you hear if you’ve ever shot a semi-automatic rifle, when the bolt ejects the casing. It looked like a camera flash on our deck.”

Debris from the tree was everywhere, even on the chair where Connie usually sits. Twenty-foot limbs were sheared off the tree, on which a long spiral scar runs from the broken top, where the bolt struck, to the ground, where the electric charge punched holes beneath the tree.

Ron said he had had some of the trees near the house trimmed just before the storm and his yard had been swept clean. All the debris, he said, was from the tree, some of the splinters the size of a 6-foot 2×4.

“No windows broken, nothing,” Connie said. “Let me tell you, though, our hearts raced for quite a while.”

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