Bridgton Road resident Adeliya Ptashka was watching television Friday night during the thunderstorm Friday night when lightning struck her home and started a fire.

By 9 p.m., the severe thunderstorm that brought heavy winds, rain, lightning, and widespread power outages across Southern Maine had reached Westbrook, and Ptashka could see it raging out her back windows.

She said she watched, shocked, as a lightning strike lit up her back yard. She heard and felt a boom that shook her home around her. Dishes rattled in the cupboards. Knicknacks skipped around on shelves. She said it sounded as though a bomb had gone off.

“It was a crazy sound,” she said.

Then she heard the fire alarm.

A branch of that same lightning strike that Ptashka had watched turn her back yard into daytime had also entered the house and started a fire in the basement. The lightning had most likely entered through the chimney, firefighters said later.

Ptashka immediately jumped up, as her husband, who had been upstairs at the time, came downstairs and ran into the basement. Ptashka followed her husband, Yevgeniy, and discovered flames engulfing a shelving unit in a back room.

The shelving unit held the presents the Ptashkas had purchased as Christmas gifts, which were now on fire. Ptashka said her husband grabbed a fire extinguisher and pulled the pin. It broke off in his hand, leaving the fire extinguisher useless.

He rushed to get water in a bucket and threw the water onto the fire while his wife ran upstairs for another receptacle. Ptashka used a pot to throw water onto the fire, and then the two of them knocked the presents onto the floor. They stomped the flames with their feet and swiped at them with towels. Eventually, they managed to put the flames out.

Ptashka then went upstairs to call the fire department, only to find that the phone line was dead. She called the fire department with her cell phone, and firefighters, who were close by, arrived a short time later.

According to Capt. James Rogers of Westbrook Fire and Rescue, the fire was out when firefighters arrived, but wood was smoldering and filling the home with smoke. Firefighters ventilated the home until about 10:30 p.m., he said, and the home had only minor damage from the lightning strike.

Many of the presents the Ptashkas had bought for Christmas, however, had been burned. One side of a child’s backpack was melted, a cloth doll was singed, many packages with presents inside were burned.

“Everything is gone. If it didn’t burn them, it melted them,” she said. “Even paint on the shelves was melted.”

Ptashka and her husband have two grown children. She was still visibly upset on Tuesday because of the damage to the presents, but she was grateful the presents were the only real damage from the fire. She was thankful she and her husband were home to fight the fire before it could spread to the wooden rafters just above the shelving and on to the rest of the house. She was also thankful to the firefighters who searched her entire home looking for any signs of lingering fire.

“I’m so thankful,” she said. “They did such a thorough job.”

Westbrook Fire Chief Gary Littlefield said lightning strikes to houses are fairly unusual. Only a couple occur every year, and usually don’t cause major damage. However, he said, they are something to be wary of.

In the spring, a strike resulted in a small barn fire, said Littlefield, while yet another blew the chimney off a home. “A lightning bolt carries a lot of power,” he said.

Littlefield said it’s best not to use telephones, electronics or appliances during a thunderstorm. He said lightning seeks the fastest way to the ground, often hitting power lines and traveling into houses from there. He said damage to chimneys is fairly common because the chimney is usually the highest point on the house.

“Nature is a funny thing the way it works,” he said.

Lightning strikes, claims Christmas presentsA lightning strike entered the Ptashka residence on Bridgton Road last Friday night and burned this backpack, among other items intended as Christmas gifts.

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