Suspected Lightning Strike Results in Silver Lake Hills Apartments Blaze

William Austin sat at his computer around 10:30 a.m. Monday, eating a bagel when he heard a loud snap and his television went blank.

The Fenton resident then saw smoke and called the fire department as it appears lightning struck the 2500 building of Silver Lake Hills apartments, 2500 Hogan Circle in Fenton, starting a fire above Austin’s unit.

“I opened the utility room and heavy smoke was rolling out, so I closed the door and got out of there," Austin said.

Chief Robert Cairnduff said it appears as if lightning struck the maintenance room of the building, causing a fire in the void between the first and second level apartments.

“It took us awhile to find it,” Cairnduff said. “That’s the thing with lightning. It travels. It goes from one end to the other. We were chasing it.”

He added that no one was injured in the small blaze. Cairnduff said the fire alarms went off the sprinkler system initiated.

The fire did scare a few of the residents in the nearly 20 units of the building, however.

Sarah Pagel had to grab an 11-week-old baby and three dogs as she headed out the door of her apartment.

“There was a lot of commotion,” Pagel said. “The adrenaline was rushing. I was changing the baby when it happened, so I had to carry her out half dressed. She handled it well though. She stayed calm.”

Pat Higgins was “just chilling” getting ready to cook breakfast when he heard a big crash, then heard alarms shortly after. He thought they were coming from the nearby marina until he heard firefighters running the halls banging out doors telling people to evacuate.

“I saw a lot of smoke. It started coming through the vents,” Higgins said.

Kim Miller had just come back home from work sick as she walked in and heard a “big snap.”

“I saw smoke, so I grabbed my dog and got out of there,” Miller said. “I had to leave my cat there.”

Cairnduff said it appeared the damage would displace only residents of two apartments, Austin and the people that lived above him, who weren’t home at the time.

It’s not the first time the Silver Lake Hills apartments have endured a fire, a blaze destroyed 18 apartments of the complex in 2009.