House catches fire amid multiple lightning strikes

A house in Derby has been damaged by a fire believed to have been started by a lightning strike.

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service (DFRS) said it was called to the property in Blagreaves Lane, Littleover, just before 21:00 BST on Saturday.

It said six fire crews were deployed to deal with the fire in the roof of the house.

Nobody was injured but the house was damaged, the fire service said.

Fire crews were unable to use their aerial ladder to deal with the blaze because it was not safe to do so in the stormy weather.

However, they were able to bring the flames under control before leaving the scene in the early hours of Sunday.

Neighbour Dave Marubbi, 53, said he called 999.

"I was in the bath, after working in the garden," he told the BBC.

"My house is next to it and the lightning strike was 30 feet from my bathroom.

"The lightning strike and the thunderclap came at the same time and I thought that's very close.

"I jumped out of the bath and looked out of the window to see fallen debris, and I started to see an orange reflection in the trees."

The fire service said it had also been called to reports of a house that was believed to have been struck by lightning in Dannah Street, in Ripley, at 20:41 on Saturday.

Nobody was injured but crews isolated the gas and electric supplies to make the property safe.

Earlier, at 16:51, the fire service was called after lightning hit cabling on flats in Jubilee Close in Melbourne where an internal wall had blown down.

There was a further call at 16:58 to a home in Castle Street, Melbourne, where a woman was believed to have been affected by the lightning strike.

She was handed into the care of East Midlands Ambulance Service, the fire service said.

Fire service group manager David Diggins said: “It has been a busy night for the county's emergency services dealing with the impact of a significant thunderstorm.

“Firefighters were mobilised by our control room operators to several properties believed to have been hit by lightning."

The stormy weather affected other parts of the East Midlands with some flash flooding reported on roads in Leicester and Market Harborough town centre.

More than 45,000 properties were affected by power cuts in towns and villages, including Desford and Market Bosworth, to the west of Leicester during stormy weather at 16:30 Saturday.

National Grid said there was a fault on its high voltage overhead network, but that power had been restored to all properties by 20:30.