An island couple yesterday described their terrifying experience when a bolt of lightning hit their house.
Farquhar and Danielle Macleod heard a noise like an explosion and were devastated when they saw the damage to their home, Grimisdale at Leverburgh that they run as a guest house in the summer .
Mr Macleod, the Harris undertaker – said he initially though lightning had struck his car.
But then the couple discovered the chimney stack had taken full force of the bolt and had crashed down on the roof, damaging rafters and smashing tiles.
There timber veranda now has a big hole where heavy blocks of masonry smashed through.
Inside, the gas fire in the front room was blown out of the wall and furniture damaged, while scorch marks were left on walls and Christmas lights were burnt.
The couple’s phone line and electrical system was blown as a result and they are now without heat and light.
Last night they were trying to make the house wind and watertight before more bad weather arrived.
Mr Macleod said: “I was in bed in the morning when I heard the explosion. The living room was just a bomb site. The gas fire was blown out of the wall and there were bits of furniture everywhere.
“It was total devastation and very frightening.
“My wife was terrified. She is scared of thunder and lightning and was very, very scared indeed.”
“We’ve got no electrical power and our gas is off at the moment.”
His wife said: “I thought the house was going to fall down. I was very, very scared. I was panicking. I didn’t know what happened.
“There was this big flash of lightning and a bang. The lightning strike went down the chimney and burst it, causing a lot of damage.”
Widespread lightning has been a feature of the stormy weather that continued yesterday – and a house in Callanish, Lewis, was struck twice within 24 hours during a the storm. Phone lines and sockets exploded from the walls, roughcast cracked and curtains were scorched.
Scottish Hydro Electric said that a lightning strike near Fort Augustus at 9am had knocked out supplies to 27,000 homes.
Most supplies were restored by 4.45pm, leaving a few hundred people in the Western Isles and Skye without electricity.
Electrical storms hit lines in north Harris, meaning that people in the Hushinish to Bunavoneader areas had been without power since Wednesday.