A lightning strike in Pembroke Pines became a literal shock to a local family when it hit their home's flagpole, leading to a cascade of electrical damage. Surveillance footage captured the moment on Wednesday afternoon as a powerful electric current barreled through the yard, charring appliances and electronics within the home. According to WSVN, Robert Goggin Jr. and his father returned home to discover their appliances, a garage door opener, and Wi-Fi routers had been fried by the strike, with some items "looking different."
The elder Goggin shared with Local 10, "It really gives you an eye awakening event to think about your friends and your family that one day you could be here and the next day you could be gone." He likened the suddenness of the lightning strike to the unpredictability of life itself. The flagpole incident also seemed to momentarily uproot a piece of the past, as Goggin recounted memories of Hurricane Andrew from 1992.
Despite causing significant property damage, which included a hole in an electrical panel and charred fixtures strewn across the yard, remarkably, no injuries were reported. This stroke of fortune extended to the family's four pets – two cats were inside while two others were out back at the time of the strike, but all were found to be safe. “Their hair is a little stood up straight. I think their hairdo has changed a little bit, so in a lucky way, we get to have a little giggle out of that,” the elder Goggin said, as reported by WSVN.
As Goggin pointed out to Local 10, the immediacy of lightning doesn't allow the kind of preparation afforded by a hurricane.
