Jackson resident shares shocking experience with lightning strike
JACKSON, Tenn. — After hearing some rumbling thunder and rain stop, Jackson resident Caitlin Roach decided to dry her hair before heading out on Sunday afternoon. But what happened next was shocking.
“I went in to dry my hair because my hair was still wet and I was drying my hair, I sat the drier down on the counter, and all of a sudden I heard a loud crack,” said Roach. “I saw sparks flying off the drier and I felt electricity coming out of my hands and my feet.”
Roach says the electricity moving through her body was unlike anything she had ever felt before, but she’s lucky to be okay.
“It was just different, I don’t know. It was unlike anything else,” Roach said. “It was just a jolt and it scared me quite a bit, because I was thinking ‘I’m still standing here but is something else about to happen to me?'”
Roach went to the hospital afterwards to assure that she was okay and suffered no problems. However, a few more problems arose in her house.
“As I continued to walk around, I started seeing smoke come from my stove, so I immediately called 911 and then the real chaos ensued,” Roach said.
Not only had the lightning melted part of her stove, many other appliances were damaged such as her garage door, thermostat, television, and more — and may continue to cause problems over the next few weeks.
“Apparently things could continue to pop up over the next few weeks that may be working fine today but aren’t working fine later.”
While the cause is still being investigated, officials believe that lightning may have struck a pond nearby and traveled to her house, where it moved through outlets. But it seems to have affected neighbors as well.
“I posted in my neighborhood Facebook group and there have been some others around here, one said her TV was ruined,” Roach said. “People were saying it knocked their phone out of their hand while standing in the kitchen.”
Roach says while the incident was inconvenient, she’s grateful to be okay.
“Those things are kind of abstract that we were taught as kids not to do while it’s storming, I just wanted to reiterate that there’s definitely some truth to that and I learned it the hard way. Thankfully I wasn’t holding the hairdryer so it could have been a lot worse.”
While you cannot necessarily prevent it from happening, you can be aware of it, and that is exactly what Roach wanted to spread when she posted about her experience on Facebook.
“Just to remind people, ‘Hey, show this to your kids. This does happen, it happened to somebody you know, it happened in your community’ and not ‘Oh, that’s just an old wives tale.'”
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