Rosemount Fourplex Goes Up in Flames, Fire Attributed to Lightning

Rosemount fire crews battled yet another lightning-related blaze this weekend. Saturday, a fourplex on Cornell Trail was hit during an early-morning thunderstorm.

Homeowner Carla Swanson said the storm reached a fever pitch around 4:30 a.m. She saw a "big ball of light" then heard a "very loud boom" as the lightning hit. She wasn't aware that the building had caught fire at first, she said, though the circuitry had gone awry. Her microwave was beeping, but the air conditioning wouldn't turn on. Then the smoke came.

As the families evacuated, the fire tore through large portions of the building.

"The rain was really coming down hard at that point, just sheets and sheets of it, but it had no effect on the fire," said Fire Chief Richard Schroeder. "That's how intense the heat was."

The roof is now open to the sky. One of the units is a total loss, Schroeder said. The other three sustained smoke and water damage. Swanson's unit, her home of 23 years, will likely be salvaged, though the family will have to relocate for the foreseeable future. 

The fourplex on Cornell is the fifth Rosemount home to be felled by a lightning-related fire this summer, and the second of the last seven days.

Earlier this week, another home on the 2000 block of 140th Street West was hit by lightning just before 9 a.m. on July 9. Caroline Lambrecht, a sixth-grader, was home alone at the time. According to a statement from the city, the girl heard a loud noise, “like a bomb went off.” 

"Fortunately, she'd just attended fire safety camp and she scooped up the dog and cat and got out of there," Schroeder said. 

Schroeder said that the lightning travelled through the house, via the wiring and other conductors, starting multiple fires. To make matters worse, when Rosemount Police Sgt. John Sommers and Officer Chad Rosa arrived, the gas meter was blowing gas into the house.

Officers were able to successfully shut off the gas meter. By a stroke of luck, the flames seems to have burned through a plastic water line, causing the water to spray out and extinguish the fire. The home sustained significant damage, Schroeder said, but it is salvageable.  

So far, the Rosemount Fire Department has responded to an unprecedented number of lightning-related fires. The phenomenon seems to extend further than Rosemount. One one recent occasion, the Rosemount Fire Department tried to call in neighboring fire crews for assistance on a lightning fire, only to find that departments in Bloomington and Farmington were all battling lightning fires of their own.

"I've been doing this for 16 years and before this summer I could count lightning fires on one hand," Schroeder said. "We're pulling our hair out with these things. It's very odd."