Severe thunderstorms roll through

HAMPTON ROADS, Va. - Vincent Smith spent the better part of his Thursday waiting for an insurance adjuster to look at what a storm did to his home Wednesday night. Smith told WAVY.com he was in his home listening to the storm when he lost power.

"I came out here to the panel box and tried to get the power back on. I couldn't do it at first,  then I smelled smoke and I thought the panel box was probably an electrical fire," he said.

Electricity was certainly involved. A lightning bolt went through the roof of his house.  "You hear a pow, POW POW. It was right over the house," Smith said.

He went into the garage and saw a strange path of damage. He explained, "I looked and saw steam coming from the top of the ceiling. I looked and saw the carpet was ripped and all burned, and the speakers were blown out and my stereo system was fried."

The surge was so powerful, it turned Smith's black cast iron stove, white.

Fire officials told WAVY.com lightning strikes on homes or other buildings are unpredictable and unavoidable. So are associated power outages.

While rain started falling on Thursday, generators continued to run outside Pinboys at the Beach. Inside the owner worked to re-open from damage because of storms on Wednesday.

While customers tried to knock down pins on the lanes, thunder and lightning and rain came down on the region. Then a fuse blew. Co-owner Aaron Winter said he and employees tried to shut off all of the power to fix the fuse, then something went wrong.

"Part of one fuse stayed connected to the main power in the building and the other two disconnected and when that happened all the power went to just one and actually started a fire," he explained. He said, "We actually had to evacuate the entire building especially once the fire got going."

His was one of several Wednesday. Virginia Beach Fire Battalion Chief Leon Dextradeur said , "We had a rash of storms come through. We had multiple house fires, three house fires, and one commercial fire at the same time."

Lightning from the storms is believed to have started fires on Lynnhaven Circle, another on Shore Drive near First Landing Lane and a third on Ben Hogan Drive.

Firefighters said lightning caused severe damage to a home on Lynnhaven Circle. After crews put out the flames, the Fire Marshal condemned the home.

No one was hurt in any of the fires, but they did cause thousands of dollars in damage. Dextradeur said they there are no real prevention measures people can take. "We're at the mercy of mother nature, and mother nature as we well know in this area with the humidity and storms that come through we have multiple lightning strikes all the time... What you can do is if you think you're in path of the storm and you have been struck by lightning get out of your house. Check your home. If there's smoke get out and call 911," he said.

Localized street flooding was reported in several areas as heavy rain fell through a good portion of the region.

Officials at the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel halted traffic momentarily due to the storms.

Thousands were left without power. For the latest on power outages, visit Dominion Virginia Power's Website.

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