I will never forget our first lightning strike.

I am getting ahead of myself. I will start at the beginning — around 6:20 p.m. on Tuesday, April 29, 2025.

The storms that evening passed quickly and violently. My wife Jody and I were sitting in the kitchen when we heard a sound best described as a piercing electrical shriek. I ran out the front door to see what was going on and it didn’t take long to solve this mystery.

The utility pole across the street was shooting electrical sparks — sometimes in violent outbursts. At first, our lights flickered but stayed on, but after the second or third violent outburst our power was gone and the utility pole was putting on a display worthy of Zambelli.

I tried to call Duquesne Light to report that the utility pole was on fire but I couldn’t get through, so I dialed 911 instead. On the eighth attempt I got through. They were aware of the problem.

The Mt. Lebanon Fire Department arrived quickly and controlled the situation as best they could until Duquesne Light cut off the power supply to the utility pole. Duquesne Light crews were swamped that evening and it took them a few hours to arrive. After they shut off the power to the burning pole and did some cleanup work, both Duquesne Light and the fire department moved on to their next crisis of the night, and we settled in without power.

“A while without power” stretched out for six days – our power was finally restored at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, May 5.

Eleven minutes after the power returned, our upstairs smoke detector went off. With smoke coming from the upstairs bathroom, accompanied by an odor of electrical fire, I called 911 to report a fire in our home. The 911 operator asked me some questions, dispatched the Mt. Lebanon Fire Department along with the Dormont Fire Department, and advised my wife and I to leave the home as quickly as we could. Which we did. Of course it was pouring rain at the time.

I assumed the fire was related to our power being restored eleven minutes earlier. But the firefighters explained that our home had probably been struck by lightning during the storm almost a week earlier, and that the lightning strike had blown the bathroom electrical outlet out of its junction box. As they explained it, “120 volts doesn’t cause this type of damage.”

Although power had been restored at the meter, the fire department told us we would be without power for another night, until an electrician could inspect our system. What’s one more night without power? And technically, we did have power for eleven entire minutes.

Our main electrical panel has been inspected and replaced, along with our refrigerator, range, dishwasher, microwave oven and washing machine. Not to mention the coffeemaker and the kitchen TV. As far as we can tell, all of these appliances had their electronics destroyed by the power surges on April 29.

I know many others suffered far worse than we did and I am grateful that we are safe and comfortable in our home. I am grateful for the work the first responders have done to restore power and to keep us safe, even though I would have preferred to have power restored earlier. I am grateful we did not have any trees fall on our home or our cars, that we continued to have hot and cold running water throughout the power outage, and we were able to rent a generator to keep the basement chest freezer and the downstairs “beer fridge” running. And I am grateful this drama played out now, and not in February. Even our internet service is now restored. Plus, we got the opportunity to meet some neighbors we didn’t know before the event.

In the coming days and months, I hope we slink back towards normalcy and back towards our nice, boring existence. And I hope our first lightning strike will also be our last.