Firefighters kept busy with eruption of calls after severe lightning on the Avalon, says platoon chief
Mike Hall says in 4 hours they had 50 calls
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 strikes, 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.
'Storm was unusual'
Newfoundland Power spokesperson Glenda Power said at the storm's peak, 10,000 customers were without power.
That number has since been whittled down to about 40 customers as of late Thursday morning.
"It was certainly unusual because the storm was unusual," Power said.
She said the area around Portugal Cove-St. Philip's and Bell Island experienced the biggest disruptions, with 4,000 customers impacted.
Newfoundland Power knew the storm was coming, however, and Power said the ulility company had teams in place to handle it and respond quickly.
'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.
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With files from The St. John’s Morning Show