Lightning bolt tears up backyard of Mass. house
(CBS News) FOXBORO - One Massachusetts homeowner experienced the brute strength of nature after a lightning bolt traveled through her backyard, digging up a 25-foot trench and shooting shards of tree trunk and large stones through the air.
A 74-year-old woman has been taken to the hospital after a bolt shattered a tree and tunneled through her backyard and ultimately exited the house through the roof, CBS station WBZ in Boston reported. The lightning left parts of her deck in pieces and melted some of her gutters.
"It appears the lightning hit the tree in the backyard and then traveled through the ground. It came back up through the ground here creating a trench," her neighbor Nick Gildred told WBZ, pointing to the dug up lawn that looked as if someone had tilled the soil.
The bolt didn't travel through Gildred's property, but flying debris cut a hole through an umbrella on his deck and shattered the glass on his patio table.
"You didn't realize you could get this much damage from one lighting bolt," he admitted.
The homeowner's son, Marc Door, said that his mother was shaken up by the experience but was doing okay.
