Lightning really can strike twice

Margaret and husband Stephen returned home to find 15ft flames leaping from the roof of their semi-detached house in Kennington after Wednesday night's storm.

The family had been at a confirmation service for 13-year-old daughter Keri when lightning struck for the second time in 30 years, causing an estimated £50,000 damage.

Mrs Dixon, 36, recalled how the house in Meadow View Road had been hit when she was a girl. "I'll never forget it - it blew the television across the room. I've got a bad feeling about this house."

She said of the latest strike: "Thank God we were not at home. I was singing my heart out at church and saying to Keri how we would always remember her confirmation. "This has ruined it - the fire will always be connected with it now. Our only consolation is that no-one was hurt."

Weather experts put the chance of a house being hit twice by lightning as one in three million.

Neighbour Jim Hardiman, who was in his shop across the road from the house when the lightning struck at about 8pm, said: "Flames were leaping ten to 15ft in the air. The whole roof was well alight."

Mrs Dixon said: "We had five messages on the mobile phone when we came out of the service telling us to get home.

"I couldn't believe it when we got here. We have lost the whole of the first floor and the ceiling is badly damaged on the ground floor.

"We were in the middle of renovating. "What is really upsetting is that I had kept all the baby clothes and the cot that the girls slept in. I wanted to pass them on to my grandchildren, but it has all been destroyed."

The couple, Keri, and their other daughters, Gemma, 15, and Hannah, ten stayed the night with relatives in Oxford.

Mrs Dixon said: "I had to go and buy clothes in Tesco's at one o'clock in the morning.

"All we had were the clothes we went to confirmation in."

Story date: Friday 21 May

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