Lightning strikes Parmelia homes

Parmelia man George Koutlis knows he is lucky to be alive after lightning struck his home Monday morning and sent a minor static discharge through his body.

The father-of-two said he was working on his laptop when the lightning hit, leaving him with a tingling and warm sensation in his palms which radiated up his arms.

The lightning blew out the house's power and Mr Koutlis lay on the ground waiting for the rumbling of the thunderstorm to die down before he rang an ambulance.

He said the incident caught him completely off-guard.

"I heard the explosion first," he said.

"Out the corner of my eye I just saw a bright flash with a bit of heat.

"It felt as if the sun had come out from the clouds.

"It was very quick so I only felt warm, so to speak, for a short time."

The 30-year-old said he was relieved his wife Kristy and daughters, three-year-old Nikki and 12-month-old Sophie, had left earlier in the day, before the second weather front hit about 8.10am.

"It could have been worse," he said.

"I'm lucky that my children weren't home and my wife; they take precedence over me. It wasn't significant enough to kill me or blow the laptop, however one of the firies, who had an electrician background, said the switches took the brunt (of the strike)."

Across the road, neighbour Tom Wilson's house was also hit by lightning, which scorched his power box and blew out his garden reticulation.

A metre-long crack in Mr Wilson's front lawn shows where a lightning bolt travelled down a palm tree and into the ground.

Mr Wilson said the bang of the lightning as it hit the tree was so loud it threw him out of bed.

He said the lightning had travelled along his reticulation piping and "blown a hole" in a concrete wall on his front verge.

St John Ambulance metro operations manager Paul Hogg said in the worst cases, the electric shock from a lightning strike could stop a person's heart from beating and put them into cardiac arrest or cause serious burns.