FRANKLIN, MASS. (WHDH) - A lightning strike is believed to be the cause of a house fire in Franklin early Thursday morning.
Firefighters responding to a reported fire on North Park Street around 4:40 a.m. discovered smoke coming from the roof.
Franklin Fire Chief James McLaughlin said a storm was passing through at the time of the fire and the cause is believed to be a lightning strike.
“We have all the indications at this point that this was a lightning strike but again we’ll do a full investigation to verify if that was the case,” he said.
Four residents were inside the two-unit house and all got out safely before first responders arrived.
“The fact of the matter is one person was awake, they all heard it. Even the residents that were sleeping heard the strike and they did the right thing and got out of there very quickly,” McLaughlin said. “That’s the most important thing, soon as they knew there was a problem, they all got out of there very quickly.”
One of the residents, Robert Glencross, described the moment he says he heard the lightning strike down on the house.
“It sounded like a bomb going off. It was just like that, it was a ‘ba boom,'” he described. “The house shook, I shook, and I knew what it was. There’s no disguising that noise, it was lightning striking. I knew it hit the house.”
Crews continued to monitor hot spots throughout the morning.
Lightning is just part of wild weather that has been wreaking havoc on the Bay State ahead of Tropical Storm Elsa’s arrival on Friday.
A tree toppled on a house in Norwell and a fallen tree crushed a car in Weymouth as whipping winds moved through the state.
New Englanders are rushing to clean up and patch holes ahead of more rain set to accompany Elsa.
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