Firefighters kept busy with eruption of calls after severe lightning on the Avalon, says platoon chief

CBC

4 days ago

Part of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula was hit with an intense thunderstorm on Wednesday, which seemed to keep firefighters in the region busy overnight with a high volume of calls,says the platoon chief for the St. John's Regional Fire Department.
Mike Hall said on average, the department typically gets about a dozen calls from midnight to 8 a.m.
"But last night, in a period of four hours, we had over 50 calls come in with multiple structure fires throughout the city," he told CBC News.
He said the busy period started around 11:30 p.m. on Wednesday and ended around 4 a.m., and included calls to residential fires, a pole fire, shed fire, lightning strikes on a house and medical calls.
"The place just erupted with activity," said Hall.
As soon as a truck was done at one site, he said they would be sent to another, before being sent to another call.
Many of the calls came in around the time when a thunder and lightning storm was hitting the region, but Hall couldn't definitively say if the high level of activity was connected, as the investigations haven't been completed.
"But certainly very coincidental that at the very time all these lightning strikes were happening within the city that, you know, we happen [to have] all these structure fires. So I would certainly think there's a correlation."
He said whenever there are lightning strike, there is a worry it could develop into something more serious.
"Luckily last night, after the lightning strikes, well, then the rain came," said Hall.
One call was for a fire at a home on Pilot's Hill in downtown St. John's, which Hall said two fire stations worked on. Residents have been displaced and the adjoining homes have smoke damage.
Another call was for a pole fire on Baird Place, where there was a live wire in the rear of a home, he said.
A detached shed also caught at a Paradise home, he said.
"All significant calls," said Hall.
However, he said with the hard work of the firefighters, their call centre and Newfoundland Power, it was all contained.
To handle the influx of calls Hall said they had to bring in additional people in to work the call centre.
As far as he knows there were no reported injuries connected to the fires.
'Crazy pictures'
Meteorologist Melissa Field said Wednesday evening's storm developed east of the Burin Peninsula and tracked across parts of the Avalon Peninsula and into the St. John's metro area.
Environment Canada issued a severe thunderstorm warning for the St. John's metro area.
"We don't typically issue severe thunderstorm warnings for just thunder and lightning. It's more of the impact, the actual weather that goes along with them," she told CBC.
Field said the storm pulled offshore around midnight.
"So we were seeing on social media all kinds of crazy pictures, videos of all the lightning. So it did look like it put on quite the show," said Field.
CBC News has asked Newfoundland Power for an update, and according to its website as of Thursday morning there are five unplanned power outages in the area spanning St. John's to the southern shore, three of which are caused by lightning.