Clinton family carries on after storm causes fire
By Randy Bell
When the National Weather Service Jackson Forecast Office issued a severe thunderstorm warning for central Hinds County shortly after 10:30 p.m. on August 20, it said the storm could be packing wind gusts up to sixty miles an hour and hail as large as quarters. But, moments before the warning was scheduled to expire at midnight, another hazard – which is always a risk during a thunderstorm – destroyed a Clinton family’s home. Lightning hit the house on Pinehaven Place touching off a huge blaze.
“We received a call around 11:55 p.m.,” says Clinton Fire Chief Levius Buckley. “On arrival, heavy flames and smoke [were] coming from the right side of the structure. A massive ball of fire.”
Three members of the Hodgin family escaped the inferno, along with their five pets.
“They were all able to get out safely,” Buckley says.
But even though firefighters were able to keep the flames from spreading to the bedrooms, there was heavy damage to the rest of the home as the fire burned through the roof.
“I would classify it as a total loss,” the chief says. “The top floor above the garage, that’s now on the first floor.”
Buckley says there was water and smoke damage throughout the home, and it’s likely that the lightning strike fried all of the electrical wiring.
Brian Hodgin says he, his wife Beth and their daughter Madeline were in bed when the lightning hit.
“We heard a big kaboom, and we just assumed it was a lightning strike of one of the trees near the house,” he recalls. “The power flickered, and then everything seemed to come back on.”
And, even though smoke alarms started going off, Brian says there was no immediate concern, because one of the detectors was prone to false activations anytime there was a lightning strike nearby.
As Beth puts it, “You never think lightning is going to strike your house.”
She says while her husband was checking the upstairs, she and her daughter started rounding up the dogs and cats, “just in case.”
As he opened the door to the attic, he was hit with a wall of flames and smoke.
“I closed the door and yelled down to them, ‘We need to evacuate. The house is on fire.’”
Help was quick to arrive.
“The fire department was here in less than ten minutes, probably closer to three or four minutes. They were here lickety-split. I counted as many as eight trucks at one point,” Brian says.
Firefighters battled the flames for six hours.
Despite the loss of the home where the family has lived for six years, they consider themselves lucky.
“What if we had just cleared the smoke detectors and gone back to sleep?” Brian wonders. “Would we still be here to talk about it?”
The family plans to rebuild, but that won’t happen anytime soon. Their insurance policy will pay for them to stay in a rental home for up to two years, but they intend to return to Pinehaven Place.
“We love this neighborhood,” Brian says. “We love the people in it. And if we didn’t already love everything, just the overwhelming positive support since [the fire] has solidified that fact even more.” One of their neighbors established a Go Fund Me account for the family at https://gofund.me/448747a5a.
Beth also offered a shout-out to her daughter’s school, Clinton Christian Academy, for helping to organize donations and for contacting school uniform supplier Zoghby’s regarding the fire. The company agreed to donate a new set of uniforms for Madeline.
According to a report from the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University, thunderstorms produce an average of almost 10,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes in each Mississippi county every year, nearly half of those occurring during the months of July and August. Hinds County averages more than 13,000 lightning strikes annually.
The report points out that lightning can travel from the base of a cloud at nearly 130,000 miles an hour and can reach temperatures three to four times hotter than the surface of the sun.
