WATCH | Lightning strikes London, Ont., high school, disrupting graduation ceremony

Talk about a Grade 8 graduation to remember.

South Collegiate Institute in London, Ont., was hosting Mountsfield Public School students for their graduation ceremony Tuesday evening when the building was hit by lightning during a severe thunderstorm.

The students had just finished walking into the auditorium and crossing the stage before celebrations got fully underway when the lightning strike forced them first outside into the pouring rain and to a different building to finish the ceremony.

"There was one extremely loud thunderclap, and you knew it was very close or hit the building, and you could hear parents saying, 'Oh, that was very close,' and shortly after that, the alarms went off," said Nathan Klepeckas, whose daughter, Sydney, was among the Grade 8 grads.

Families and staff huddled in the parking garage behind South Collegiate as wind and rain whipped the graduates, who were dressed in suits and dresses, Klepeckas said.

"It was like a hurricane out there."

Another parent, Christine Betts, described loud thunder before alarms started going off and everyone had to leave into  downpour.

"The cracks of thunder were just amazing," she said. "It was really crazy." 

Fire crews arrived and determined the building was not structurally sound and needed to remain empty, said Brent Shea, a platoon chief with London Fire.

"It was apparent that lightning had stuck the chimney, which had dislodged several pieces of concrete and many bricks from that part of the structure," Shea said. "It also broke off a large section of brick that was precariously hanging at that point.... A small section fell through the roof into the third floor and we had several pounds of weight there just hanging."

The school remains closed and South students who were supposed to be writing exams this week will be informed about alternative arrangements, school board officials said. The board has hired an engineer to look at the damage and repair the building.

After the lightning interruption, Mountsfield staff organized for parents and teachers to transport decorations and awards to Saunders Secondary School and the graduation ceremony continued without a further hitch, Klepeckas said. 

There was even a rainbow moment — South Collegiate doesn't have air conditioning, but Saunders does, which made for a much more comfortable ceremony, Betts said. 

Amateur photographer and videographer Solei Archambeault was sitting outside the school in her car, waiting for a ball hockey game to start at the arena next door, when she pulled out her phone camera to take some shots of the thunderstorm.

She ended up capturing the moment the lightning struck the chimney.

"It was super loud. It sounded like a loud crash," Archambeault said. "The odds of me being there at that exact time and getting that on camera was just outstanding."