Lightning Strikes!
This is one of those stories we wish we didn't have, but now that we do, it's quite the story to tell. During the mayhem, Nicole took as many photos and videos as possible, both for insurance claims and so we could share this story later. If you didn't catch the accompanying videos on social media, we will link them below, but to hear the full story of what happened, be sure to read the full post.
Once again, we found ourselves setting up camp on Nicole's parents' basketball court, after experiencing electrical issues at the campground where we were supposed to stay. We were thankful for the familiarity, as we were able to regroup and continue our time in Massachusetts. We mentioned that we were looking forward to experiencing New England summer in all its charm. Well, it wasn't so charming, after all. The week brought extra heat, as if we hadn't had enough. This heat wave made it practically impossible to enjoy any outdoor activities. Our new ebikes sat patiently waiting for their next outing, and we kept cool with a constantly-running generator...until the generator got angry.
Because we can only plug into the house on 15 amp, we need our generator running to start our AC. After a few days of running it almost constantly to keep cool, the generator shut down and read a low oil error code. After checking it out, we noticed that the motor was leaking oil. We did some troubleshooting and determined that it was just a bolt that needed to be tightened. Crisis averted! Soon our beloved Genny was working again.
Then Tuesday, August 9th happened, the day that the heat was finally supposed to subside. Unfortunately, the cold front came in with a bang. Several very loud bangs, actually. Nicole was in the trailer with the pets when it happened, and Anthony and Nicole's dad Ron were inside the house. We're supposed to get severe weather alerts on our phones and also follow tons of Facebook pages that alert for storms, but this one evaded the alert system. So without any warning, the skies opened up, and down came the torrential rain and lightning crashes. It was clear that the storm was directly overhead, but with no warning, we all needed to just stay put and wait it out.
Anthony's story:
"I had just cleaned up after finishing a late lunch and went to look out the window. I saw how much it was raining, so I messaged Nicole and let her know I wouldn't be out until there was a lull in the storm. Right after, the thunder got really loud, and a couple of minutes later, a big crash of thunder caused the lights in the house to flicker. That's when Ron and I went around unplugging some technology and other electrical devices. I went into the garage and unplugged the RV extension cord from the wall. We were currently on generator power, but we often stayed plugged in for the times we needed to shut the generator off. About 90 seconds after I unplugged, there was THE BIG ONE. I wasn't even facing the window at the time; I was looking up towards the ceiling, but still saw a flash. The noise was by far the loudest thunder I ever heard. At that point the power had gone out in the house, and I called Nicole to make sure she was okay. Ron and I decided to quickly run outside and check to see what got hit. That's when Nicole yelled for us to come inside the trailer."
Nicole's story:
"It seemed like the storm came out of nowhere. One minute I was pulling the shades down in the RV to block out the brightness, and the next I'm hearing the pounding of raindrops on the RV's roof. Rain in the rig always sounds extra loud, so I assumed it was just another downpour that sounded worse than it actually was. Then the thunder came. The thunder claps and lightning flashes were happening simultaneously, and the thunder was extremely loud. That's when I went onto my weather radar app and saw that we were directly under a terrible lightning storm. Tanner gets nervous when he hears thunder, so he jumped up next to me on the couch and snuggled under a blanket. We heard a couple of loud booms, and Anthony messaged me to let me know he was going to stay inside. I made a joke that we didn't hear a thing, but right afterwards I got the shock of my life. It sounded like an explosion, amplified by the echoing off the aluminum RV. It was a BOOM, followed by my scream, followed by the sound of debris hitting the roof. At that point Tanner was shaking like a leaf, so my immediate reaction was to let him know everything was fine, even though I wasn't sure it was. Right then, Anthony called me, and I told him I'm not joking anymore, and the trailer either just got hit by lightning, or it was very, very close. After some quick debate, Anthony and my dad ran outside to try and find where the lightning hit. I went into the bedroom, where I found Lily sleeping in the bed, without the slightest care that the loudest explosion sound of her life just occurred. I looked out the bedroom window and could see scarring on the tree just a few feet away from the RV. I opened the window and called the guys inside. The thunder was still booming like crazy and I didn't want them outside."
After a minute of studying the tree, we noticed scarring and broken branches on both that tree and the one right next to it. We determined that the lightning probably hit one of those trees and sent current up the other, or it hit the ground and then traveled up the trees. There were a lot of pieces of bark that had flown all across the basketball court and the driveway. Ron ran back inside, while the two of us tried to figure out our next move. That was when our generator shut off. We didn't know if that was because of a storm surge, or if it was acting finicky because of the oil situation, but we would need to try and figure that out after the storm. All we knew at that point was that the storm didn't seem to be getting any better, we now had no electricity in the rig or the house, and if we could run really fast inside, it would be safer to wait out the rest of the storm inside the house.
We started packing up a few things when Nicole looked out the window and saw that the tree had started to smolder. That's when panic set in. We grabbed a few necessary items, quickly gathered up the pets and ran into the house. Those few seconds were probably the scariest of the whole ordeal. It's not far from the basketball court to the house - probably about 60 feet, but trying to run inside with Tanner and Lily, branches falling around us, smoke filling the driveway, and rain and thunder barreling down upon us, was a run for our lives. We got inside and ran across the house screaming for Ron who had gone upstairs. We yelled up the stairs that the tree was smoking and to call 911. This was about 20 minutes after the lightning strike, but then things started moving really fast. Within just a couple of minutes, the smoke had filled the driveway all the way over to where our truck was parked, about 20 feet away. After calling the fire department, we made the quick decision to grab the pets, including Yana, Nicole's fur-sister, and evacuate with them. Ron said he would stay back and wait for the fire truck.
As we ran out into the driveway, the storm was still overhead. The raindrops were huge, but not huge enough to prevent the tree from catching on fire. We were getting the animals into the truck when the tree trunk burst into flames. We were ready to hightail it out of there, but we heard distant sirens. We couldn't believe how quickly the fire truck arrived, and thank God, because the fire was growing fast. We kept the pets in the truck (thankfully it was now cool enough to let them stay inside for a few minutes without running the engine), and we stayed back while the firefighters sprang into action. It's crazy just how much water was needed to douse the fire, and they warned us that it might start smoking again. They also told us to get the trees removed as quickly as possible, as they're now compromised. The trees around here aren't very structurally sound to begin with, as you may recall from our Nor'Easter last year. The last thing we need is for burned, hollowed out trees to come down, not to mention these trees were huge, about 80-100 feet tall each.
The firefighters left and we got to work contacting the electric company and tree service technicians, seeing if we could get people out on an emergency call. Looking at the tree, we assumed that if it were to fall, it would be in the direction of the RV, based on how it was leaning. So while Ron handled the phone calls, we were using our phones to try and find a place we could go with the RV for the night, because we weren't sure how much longer those trees would stay in the ground. In typical Massachusetts form, it was slim-pickings for availability, and ultimately we had to just stay put and cross our fingers that the trees wouldn't fall. We decided to stay inside the house for the night. We weren't going to risk our safety out in the RV.
We were fortunate to get both the electric company and a tree service company out to the house that evening. The tree company said they'd be back the next afternoon to get rid of the trees, and power was restored to the house by nightfall...well, sort of. There was still one circuit that wasn't working, nor were the garage door openers. But at that point, we took it as a win that we at least had electricity in the majority of the house.
It wasn't a restful night. We were coming down from our adrenaline rush, and once Nicole's mom got home from work, she spent the night on the phone trying to contact Verizon because the Fios internet was out. The next morning, we were up bright and early to continue our damage assessment. We had a stroke of good luck when another flip of the circuit breaker got the remaining outlets to work. We're still not quite sure what happened there, but that meant that all the circuits were working...except technology was not spared. The garage door openers were indeed fried, as were all the TVs and one of the computers.
Meanwhile, we were finally able to look at our generator and figure out why it shut off. It was reading the same error code for low oil, so we guessed that it was a continued issue from before the storm. However, all our troubleshooting tactics failed, and so we started thinking maybe it was a sensor problem, either due to the earlier oil issues or the surge. We needed to make an emergency service appointment later in the week.
The busted generator effectively derailed our plans for the week because we wouldn't be able to leave our home base. Why? Because despite Anthony's last-minute attempt to unplug us from the house, the lightning surge still found its way into our electric cord and fried the whole thing to shreds. The 50 amp end was still connected to the RV, but we lucked out, as most of the damage seemed to be in the wiring heading towards the extension cord, away from the RV. The 50 amp plug was a little burnt, but the outlet looked fine. We had no reason to think there was any damage to the rig's internal electric, but we had no real way of knowing, since both our power sources weren't available.
We couldn't find any nearby stores that carried 50 amp RV cords, and we also wanted to replace all our equipment just to be safe, including all our adapters and our surge protector. So we ordered everything on Amazon and decided to ship it to Nicole's friend Shannon's house in New Hampshire. The original plan was to be in New Hampshire on Wednesday, but we moved our reservation to Friday. The generator appointment was also scheduled for Friday, so the new plan was to head up to NH in the early morning, drop the rig off at the service center (the generator is integrated into the trailer), and then head to Shannon's to pick up the electric equipment. Assuming we'd have some source of power by the end of the day, we'd continue northward and make our reservation.
Now that we had our end-of-week plans in place, it was time to figure out where we could bring the trailer so that the tree guys could cut down the chimney-trees. We left the pets at the house and hitched up. Since we thought we would be leaving that day, we were already partially packed, so that was helpful. We decided, for the sake of familiarity, to head back to Wompatuck State Park. We could use their dump station and then ask if we could cool our heels somewhere in the park for the afternoon. If they said no, we already knew of other places we could park to kill time...like the no-amenity parking area on route 3 that we stayed in on our way down to our futile Pinewood stay.
Wompatuck has been a shining star in our Boston-area RV experience. The campground is lovely, the people are equally lovely, and it's a park full of nostalgia, which brings us comfort. The workers were so nice and told us that we could go and park in the transfer station parking lot, where there would be plenty of room for us. We paid a fee to dump, ironically pricier than our per-night resident rate to stay at the park, but we didn't care. We were just happy to have a place to park.
We're becoming pros at making the best of a bad situation, so once parked in the transfer station lot, we decided to take full advantage of our free time and the cooler weather. We grabbed our ebikes and went for a ride, stopped to hike, and then rode some more. It was just what the doctor ordered to help us relieve some stress and get ready to take on the rest of the week.
As we enjoyed our temporary displacement, Walnut Tree Service came and did a tremendous job removing the trees and then clearing the space so we could return with our RV. What a relief it was to be able to pull back onto the basketball court without the worry that a tree could fall on us at any moment! Of course we still had no electricity, so we continued to stay inside the house, but we could rest easy knowing that Buggy was safe and sound, back on his home base.
We weren't out of the woods yet (figuratively and literally), but we were happy to have a plan in place. Now all we could do was hope that plan would run smoothly.
To be continued....