FL MORRIS / FMORRIS@STARBULLETIN.COM The Yoshimura family looked at damage caused by lightning striking their house early yesterday morning. The lightning splintered the framing and plasterboard in the living room as it traveled from the ceiling to the concrete floor. Clockwise from upper left are Dee and Keith Yoshimura with their children, Joseph and Emi.

Lightning punctures
roof of house

The Yoshimuras were "a little
shaken up" by the morning storm

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By Pat Gee
pgee@starbulletin.com

A bolt of lightning tore through the roof of an Ewa Beach home and burned a hole in the carpet five feet from where two children were sleeping yesterday.

No one was injured in the early-morning storm, "just a little shaken up," said Deanna Yoshimura, who lives at 91-128 Apuu St.

Shortly before 4 a.m., a sound "like an explosion" awakened Yoshimura. Her husband Keith had just left for work. Son Joseph, 11, and daughter Emi, 7, came running into her bedroom in a panic.

Joseph kept saying, "Mom, the roof is falling down!" Yoshimura said.

When the lightning struck, he and his sister huddled together in fear under a blanket before bolting to their mom's bedroom, crying, "We're scared!" (They had fallen asleep watching TV in the living room the night before, she said.)

After comforting them, she told them to stay in the bedroom, then went to check on what happened with a flashlight because the power was out.

She saw chunks of white drywall from the ceiling on the floor, and a big chunk of drywall separated from the wall.

The lightning left a "big crack" and a charred line to mark its path, which ended in a charred spot on the carpet.

Honolulu Fire Department personnel responded around 4:30 a.m. and used a tarp to cover a six-to-12-inch slit cut through the roof by the lightning, according to fire Capt. Kenison Tejada.

Lightning that rips through a building is not common, "but it does happen," he said.

He has heard of two other incidents on Oahu in recent years, one of which occurred at his neighbor's house, Tejada said.

Most of the Yoshimuras' power was restored after an electrical repairman came about 9:30 a.m. But the television, cable service, air conditioner and garage door were still not working by Friday afternoon.

She was surprised at the amount of damage the lightning left, when she saw some of the ceiling plaster on the floor, and some roof tiles blown off into the yard.

"The lightning was so loud, it woke my neighbor. I was surprised how hard it hit us.

"None of us could go back to sleep. We prayed we wouldn't be hit again," Yoshimura said. "The most important thing is no one was hurt,"

Fred Kobashikawa, a Hawaiian Electric Co. spokesman, said the company received no complaints of power outages resulting from the thunderstorm. If anything, there were "momentary outages" lasting no more than a couple of seconds.

Weather forecaster Jeff Powell said the storm affected the west and southwest areas of Oahu, between 2 and 5 a.m., but "dissipated rather quickly."

"There was a lot of sound and fury, but not that much rainfall," he said.

The National Weather Service predicted a chance of heavy showers and possible thunderstorms over Kauai and Waimanalo, Manoa and Windward Oahu through Sunday, Powell said.