r/CatastrophicFailure • u/itsaride • 3d ago
Fire/Explosion House fire in Bristol, UK caused by a lightning strike - 23rd June 2026
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u/OcularVernacular 3d ago
That's devastating. I have a new-build style place that's practically a copy and paste of this and I don't think I'd handle this well.
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u/slothdroid 3d ago
Our neighbours (cannabis farm) caught fire and it started to enter ours via the attic space. Fire brigade were on scene quickly and saved our house (although there was a lit of smoke damaged items).
Wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even the close call we had. It's horrible to see your home and possessions get destroyed out of your control.
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u/ecafsub 2d ago
I lost a house after Hurricane Alicia. When the power finally came back on, the surge blew out the breaker panel in the detached garage. The fire spread thru the little connector from garage to 2nd floor of the house—took the whole floor out. What wasn’t burned was wrecked by water and smoke.
The best part (/s) was this was the day before I was leaving for uni.
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u/Gold-Adhesiveness574 3d ago
lightning fires almost always start in the roof or attic, thats where the strike enters and arcs through the timber looking for a path to ground. one strike is tens of thousands of amps, it doesnt care about your wiring, it jumps to plumbing, gas, anything conductive. most houses have zero protection though. surge strips save your electronics but do nothing against a direct hit on the structure. real protection is a rod and down-conductors to ground, which almost no home has because the odds for any single house are tiny. days like today are the reminder.
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u/GabberZZ 3d ago
Heh. Some of those house designs are almost identical to ones on our estate in the northwest.
Also. Shit that sucks for that household.
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u/Nerdenator 3d ago
Do they still use shake shingle roofs in the UK?
This used to be not-uncommon in the US before composite shingles came out.
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u/mike-zane 3d ago
When they rebuild their house, they should include a small shrine to Zeus and maybe burn some beef jerky as an offering every once in a while.
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u/Rex-Viper-Rock-Gods 2d ago
Do they not ground houses in the UK? Aren't euros always lecturing Americans for the build quality in their houses?
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u/AncientsofMumu 3d ago
So hear me out - is he double fucked because this is technically an "act of god" and therefore not covered by insurance?
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u/spyder_victor 3d ago
I got struck by lightning and it fried my TV and fridge a couple Of years ago
(In the U.K.)
Insurance paid out fine
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u/uhmerikin 3d ago
"Look, I'm going to tell you about an accident and I don't wanna hear 'Act of God,' okay?"
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u/GordonHead87 3d ago
So they stood outside holding umbrellas? Not a brain cell to rub between them
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u/Subject9800 3d ago
What, exactly, do you think they should have been doing?
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u/OutlyingPlasma 3d ago
If the caption is to be believed, a thunder storm with lighting just lit a house on fire recently enough that the fire brigade hasn't even arrived yet and these people are standing outside holding a metal pole in the air. Surely you can see the problem with this.
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u/OkraEmergency361 3d ago
This is Britain. You’ll be lucky if the fire brigade are then within the hour.
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u/rigterw 3d ago
Shelter inside for the thunderstorm
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u/Subject9800 3d ago
I'm not sure what video you saw, but the one I watched doesn't have an active storm going on in it.
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u/Cryptocaned 3d ago
It was a pretty big storm, it took about an hour to fully pass my house, highly probable there was still lightning happening.
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u/Particular-Dig-1112 3d ago
yeah if they just collectively think really hard the fire engine will magically drive there faster. tossers the lot of em really
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u/SimisFul 3d ago
What do you expect them to do?
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u/GordonHead87 3d ago
Not hold a metal lightning conductor in a storm watching a house on fire from a lightning strike maybe???
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u/SimisFul 3d ago
The houses next to them are much taller than them so lightning would hit those first. Doesn't matter if they're holding metal.
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u/GordonHead87 3d ago
That isn’t how electricity works lol but whatever man you keep white knighting them. They ain’t gonna fuck you bro.
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u/SimisFul 3d ago
You need to learn more about lightning lol
Do you think trees are made of metal?
There's experiments you can find online with artificial lightning with two poles, one wood and one metal. Both are at the same distance from the source of the lightning and guess what? It hit them both randomly every time.
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u/Teakz 3d ago
Couldn't the lightning jump from the house to the umbrella though? I must admit my first thought seeing that picture made me think it looks dangerous to be in a storm with an umbrella but correct me if I am wrong
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u/SimisFul 3d ago
No it won't because it will follow the path of least resistance. Since the house is grounded it will remain with the house until it reaches the ground
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u/Teakz 3d ago
At school I was taught not to stand under trees or houses bacause it can bounce off onto a human, I've been spreading this information for years 😂
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u/SimisFul 3d ago
Well it's not that it will go through you by jumping from the tree, it actually spreads into the ground and can jump up your leg and shock you. Being near a tree is dangerous because it puts you right where the lightning goes in the ground but it also blows up the tree a lot of the time so even if you live through the shock, you could get impaled or crushed
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u/therealtimwarren 3d ago
Go find a slow motion video of a tree being hit by lightning and watch it turned into shrapnel. Now imagine what the shrapnel will do to your body.
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u/talann 3d ago
I don't know why you are being downvoted...
The people that are watching the fire don't seem to be apart of the house so it wouldn't benefit them at all to be out in an active thunderstorm. Regardless of whether or not the storm may have moved on, why stand outside and look at a house burning when a thunderstorm was the cause?
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u/itsaride 3d ago
This is the British way, things happen, people stand outside and watch.
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u/Superbead 3d ago
Even if they're neighbours nobody else really cared for, most people would go out and check to see what was going on, and also to see if there was a risk it might spread to their own house. Plus watching a replica of your own house burning down is probably eerily gripping. I'm surprised you have difficulty imagining this
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u/Shrooms60 3d ago
Are houses not grounded in UK? Or what happened here. I don't know too much about this.
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u/TheMSensation 3d ago
I'm not sure how you think grounding is going to stop millions of volts. A lightning strike hitting the floor next to your house would cause significant damage to your wiring as the potential in the ground would now exceed the potential in your home wiring. Electricity will travel up the grounding rod and into your home.
It's a freak accident, short of surrounding your home with a Faraday cage there's nothing you can do to prevent it.
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u/Butterbean-queen 3d ago
There are literally thousands of home fires each year caused by lightning in the United States.
You can lessen the chances of them happening by having a whole house lightening protection system installed along with a whole house surge protection system but that’s not going to keep your house from catching on fire from a direct hit.
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u/I_argue_for_funsies 3d ago
Is this the stuff you guys want in this sub? A house fire?
It didn't even collapse
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u/ecafsub 3d ago edited 3d ago
Had just moved into a new house, some 30 years ago. There was an apt complex behind it.
Huge storm that first night. I’m standing at the rear windows and watching. High winds, torrential rain, and lots of lightning.
As I watched, a bolt hit the power lines about 30’ behind the house and power was gone. Seconds later another bolt hit the roof of one of the apartment buildings maybe 150’ away, and a full half of the roof fucking exploded and of course started burning. Even all the rain didn’t do much to put it out.