Lightning

strikes two

houses

By KURT NESBITT

Journal Staff Writer

NEW ULM -- Forget the old saying about lighting and how it never strikes twice.

It hit two houses here during a severe thunderstorm Monday night, causing minor damage to both residences.

Despite those incidents, Monday night's storm caused little damage in the area although winds managed to bring down a few branches and cause hour-long power outages.

During that time, roughly an inch of rain fell and lightning flashed for the better part of two hours.

Lighting struck a house on North Garden Street around 10:30 p.m. and caused two television sets and a computer to come on despite the fact that there was no actual electricity.

One hour later, as the Rev. R.E. Wehrwein was dozing off on the couch in his living room, another bolt of lighting struck, waking up most of his family.

"It was the loudest clap of thunder I ever heard," said Wehrwein, who said he did not see the lighting bolt strike.

The electrical power to the house at 1121 S. Jefferson St. went off at 10:45 p.m. Wehrwein said the outage "was probably a good thing as I understand. The damage could've been a whole lot worse but the damage was minimal."

Firefighters got involved after Wehrwein's son noticed a burning smell coming from somewhere in the house. The New Ulm Fire Department was paged at 11:30 p.m. Fire Chief Curt Curry said it was one of two calls firefighters received Monday night; the other was a false alarm at RiverBend Alternative School, he said.

After firefighters arrived, they checked the house and ultimately advised Wehrwein not to turn the power back on. Wehrwein said he had an electrician check the house Tuesday morning.

The lighting blew out the transformer for the front doorbell and damaged the frame of the front door, Wehrwein said. The lighting also threw up one of the roots from the tree in the Wehrwein's front yard.

"It could've been a lot worse. What we had was minor and I'm thankful that it just gave us a scare and shortened our sleep a little bit," he said.

Lighting struck the same house once before about eight years ago, according to former owner Gary Berg. In that case, the electrical blast hit the tree, came up some guardrails and found its way into the light switches, blowing out most of the electrical appliances in the house and leaving the residence with no other damage.