BY SAUNDRA AMRHEIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
UNION TOWNSHIP -- The chances of lightning striking twice rank with hitting the lottery -- unless you live in West Chester.
After 16 lightning strikes in three weeks and $1.5 million in damage to homes, residents here feel anything but lucky.
The most recent was Friday night, when a West Chester house got zapped, causing some minor electrical damage but no fire.
Late last month, one subdivision endured two strikes the same week. Five days earlier and a mile away, lightning ignited a blaze that led to $1.2 million in damage to a home across the street from U.S. Rep. John Boehner.
Sitting atop a ridge 300 feet higher than surrounding communities, this corner of Butler County -- dubbed "lightning alley" by firefighters -- has long been vulnerable to strikes, experts say. But vacant farmland 10 years ago is fast becoming upscale subdivisions, placing more unwitting residents in danger.
"Everyone is building on these hills," said Union Township Administrator David Gully. "Every time there's a storm and we get lightning, we lose a house."
No one can say for certain why West Chester has been bombarded with strikes this year. More homes could be drawing more lightning, experts say, by acting as pathways for bolts to reach the ground. What scientists do know is that the Tristate has long carried some of the heaviest lightning traffic in the country.
From early May to early June, the 11 county area saw almost 20,000 cloud-to-ground lightning strikes, according to the National Lightning Detection Network, a Tucson company that tracks lightning for the National Weather Service, NASA and other public agencies. Butler County was third on the list with 2,501 -- about 500 more than Warren County, which ranked fourth.
The first was Brown County with 3,320, then Clinton County with 2,618.
Firefighters in those two counties east and north of Cincinnati, respectively, say there has been an unusual amount of electrical and property damage to homes from lightning storms, but no strikes or large fires.
While weather specialists are calling this an average year for thunderstorms in the Tristate, West Chester officials are at a loss to explain their fate.
The Union Township Fire Department typically handles about two or three house fires from lightning in the spring and about 25 a year, Assistant Fire Chief Anthony Goller said.
But since May 19, there have been 16 homes or apartment buildings hit by lightning, four of which erupted into major fires that caused $1.5 million in damage, he said.
"Why this is happening this year compared to two years ago, I don't know," he said.
No one has been injured. But residents are scrambling for lightning protection. That was something the Brenneman family didn't consider when building their home in the Running Deer Estates off Tylersville Road in West Chester.
Their home was hit May 31.
Seven months after they moved into the $220,000 house, a bolt of lightning arched across the night sky and blew a hole in their roof.
"It sounded like one of the windows shattered, it was so shrill," said Jeff Brenneman, who was watching television in his bedroom with 11-year-old daughter, Lori, when the lightning hit at 8:30 p.m.
The Brennemans' 8-year-old son, Jimmy, ran upstairs after sparks flew out of the television in the family room. Soon the trio saw smoke pouring into the second-floor bathroom vent.
"I knew we were in trouble then," Mr. Brenneman said. He called 911, gathered the children and Spots, the cat, and raced outside to wait for wife, Joyce, shopping at Kroger.
"It's every parent's nightmare," said Joyce Brenneman, who saw the smoke and flames pouring out of her roof as she drove over the hill above her house. "I thought the children were in there and my husband sleeping."
By the time firefighters arrived minutes later, the entire roof and attic were engulfed in flames shooting 8 to 10 feet in the air, Jeff Brenneman said.
Damage could be as much as $150,000.
"I've never been afraid of lightning," Mr. Brenneman said standing among the remains of his sooty carpeting, collapsed cathedral ceiling and soggy insulation. "You never think it's going to hit you. You think, what's the chances of two homes getting hit in a week." On May 24, lightning knocked off part of a chimney on a home down the road in the same subdivision. Four other homes in West Chester were hit the same night.
Six were struck late May 19 and early May 20.
The coincidence has residents spooked. Dixie DuChemin, who lives across Senour Drive from the Brennemans, is circulating petitions among neighbors in hopes of landing group rates with a lightning protection company.
"It's too many too close," Ms. DuChemin said.
Union Township outfitted its administration building with lightning rods five years ago after three lightning hits in the same storm knocked out its 911, phone and computer systems.
Lowell Swanson, president of Darke County Lightning Protection, the company that installed the township's unit, said West Chester has become one of its top customers in the Tristate over the past three years. Before, he would gain about two clients here a year. The first week of June, he picked up nine potential customers.
"People just don't call out of the blue," he said.
Modern lightning protection is virtually hidden from view. Rods line the roof of a home and drape cables down the side of the structure, where they attach to ground rods, he said.
The protection system works by blanketing the house in positive charges shot up from the ground that shield the home from negative charges in storm clouds. A clash between the two produces lightning. Costs on newer homes typically range from $2,000 to $2,500, he said.
Residents in West Chester long believed antennae from the Voice of America site on Tylersville Road attracted lightning. But experts say an antenna would only pull a strike to itself, not the surrounding community.
Besides, most of the antennae are dismantled as the federal government is preparing to turn the property over to local agencies. However, two things might explain West Chester's experience this spring:
Moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, combined with early warm temperatures, makes conditions ripe for thunderstorms sooner than normal.
Union Township's relative high elevation and the number of homes being built there make it more likely to be struck by lightning.
"The higher up you are, the more prone you're going to be to a lightning strike," Mr. Haydu said.
The highest point along the ridge in northern Union Township is about 890 feet above sea level, said Dr. Michael Hansen, a senior geologist at the Ohio Geological Survey office in the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
Though the highest elevation in Butler County is in Oxford at more than 1,000 feet, West Chester sits 300 feet above its neighbors as land slopes into the Mill Creek Valley, he said.
"It's fairly steep," Dr. Hansen said. "It's a relative thing; lightning hitting the highest point."
New residents could be adding to the problem. Houses springing up on these hills in West Chester likely are drawing more strikes, said Stan Changnon, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Lightning seeks positive ground charges, he said. Tall structures, like homes and churches, make it easier.
"The house acts as an avenue for the charge to relieve itself," he said.
Regardless of the reasons why lightning is striking, the Brennemans aren't taking any more chances. As they rebuild, their home will be outfitted with lightning protection.
"It's the only way our daughter will move back into the house," Mr. Brenneman said.
"Your wife, too," Mrs. Brenneman added.
