At least three house fires in North Texas Tuesday were apparently caused by lightning strikes.
Fire seriously damaged a home in the 4100 block of Walnut Meadow Lane and burned the attic of another house in the 6000 block of Gentle Knoll Lane, both in North Dallas.
Nobody was injured in either of the fires.
And three members of a Rockwall County family also made it out safely after lightning apparently sparked a fire in their house near Meadowlark Place and Meadowview Road in Heath.
Randall Hughes, his wife and their 11-year-old son were inside when they heard a thunder boom.
"We were home at the time and we heard a loud pop," Hughes said. "Actually the electricity and everything came back on."
But then, they smelled smoke.
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"We waited maybe 30 seconds and the living room filled up with smoke," Hughes said. "So we got everybody out."
Hughes and his family made it out, but their home is a total loss.
"It went up very quick. Very quick," he said.
Firefighters salvaged what they could late Tuesday, some of it still smoldering.
Hughes, the owner of a sheet metal company in Mesquite, said many of the family's belongings are hard-to-replace antiques.
"We've been collecting them for a long time," he said. "My wife loves antiques, so everything in the house – bedroom sets, dressers, all that stuff – was antiques."
Hughes said they will start over in a new home.
"Everything is insured, so you know, it's just material things," he said. "The family's OK, so we're good."
