WINTER SPRINGS, Fla. – A family in Winter Springs escaped from their home Monday afternoon after a lightning strike started a fire.
Newly-released 911 recordings reveal at first, the homeowners weren’t sure the lightning had actually caught their house on fire until they saw smoke coming from the second story.
“We checked and didn’t see anything, but we kept smelling smoke and then two minutes later my husband was like, ‘there’s smoke coming out of the roof,’” the caller says to dispatch.
[WATCH BELOW: Lightning strike sparks house fire in Seminole County]
Crews with the Seminole County Fire Department responded to the neighborhood near Tuskawilla and Red Bug Lake roads just before 4 p.m. Monday after they got the call that lightning had struck the roof and started a fire in the attic.
“I see lots of smoke coming from my second story,” the homeowner said while calling 911 for help.
The fire department said the lightning also broke a water line. A report obtained by News 6 on Tuesday states by the time firefighters got to the scene, the fire had been confined to the attic because that broken water line kept the flames in check.
On Tuesday, our News 6 crew saw a tarp placed over the hole left in the roof. There were also water damage experts assessing the aftermath.
Steve Dagesse, who lives next door, said there are a lot of repairs that need to be done.
“They’ve got to go through their insurance, of course, but they said they’ll be out probably for six months to a year,” Dagesse said.
Dagesse recalled the moment the lightning hit.
“I checked it on the weather app, and it looked like it was going to miss us,” Dagesse said. “All of a sudden I saw this bright white flash just down and a humongous explosion. I’ve never heard anything that loud. My wife was sitting outside by the pool and of course, the cat turned gray even though he was black.”
Dagesse said it seemed to come out of nowhere.
“One clap, one lightning strike and that’s it,” Dagesse said. “Sun was out. I mean, I’ve never seen something like that.”
News 6 Meteorologist David Nazario looked at the radar around 4 p.m. when a storm rolled through Seminole County to provide some perspective.
“We had a pretty interesting setup, even though it’s been so hot and what some would consider dry, we’ve had enough moisture in the air for some pop off thunderstorms,” Nazario said.
[WATCH BELOW: Seminole County teen survives lightning strike]
He also pinpointed the lightning strike that likely started the fire.
“Kind of like a ‘bolt from the blue’ type of situation,” Nazario said. “Thunderstorm to the north, but the positive charge and some of your cloud-to-ground lightning, as it’s called, can sometimes reach out, kind of like daddy longlegs, if you will.”
Nazario said Floridians should be prepared for more storms that fire up quickly in these warm weather conditions.
“You can see our east coast sea breeze is coming in, and as it interacts with Lake Jesup right in through here it fires up very rapidly,” Nazario said while showing the radar again. “This is called a pulse-like thunderstorm and then it quickly washes out within a span of about 30 minutes. You get an outflow and you’re chasing that for the rest of the day. So, that’s why these cells will fie up, rain down, pop off a bunch of lightning and wind, and then all of a sudden it’s sunny days again.”
Data provided to News 6 by the Seminole County Fire Department shows they’ve responded to 14 lightning-related calls since January. Of those calls, six did not result in fires. By the same time last year, they responded to 16 total calls, 13 of which did not result in fires.
Florida is the number one state in the country for lightning-related insurance claims, according to the Insurance Information Institute. In 2024, they tracked 4,780 claims, with an average cost of $23,686.