The family slept through a lightning strike that set their house on fire

A family who slept through a lightning strike wants to thank a stranger who knocked on the door and saved their lives. Dad Ali Shah, 59, knocked on a woman’s door in the early hours of the morning to tell her black smoke was coming from his home in Watford, Herts.

He was in bed and unaware of the danger in the room above his and his wife’s bedroom – terrifyingly later told by firefighters that the ceiling could have collapsed if he had been there for another ten minutes. Fortunately, Mr Shah and his 66-year-old wife and 32-year-old daughter made it out of the house unharmed – although the property suffered up to £60,000 of damage.

Mr Shah, a technology consultant, said that although he heard the strong lightning, he did not think it had hit their house. Four fire engines rushed to tackle the blaze at the six-bedroom house last week during a Met Office yellow weather warning.

Mr Shah, who had returned to bed after the strike, described his shock at being woken at around 5am by a woman at his door, telling him to get out of the house. The father-of-three said: “It was a very strong storm.

“It was about 4:30 in the morning. We got up that way for morning prayers and the thunder would have woken us up anyway. There was a particularly loud crack and after I heard an alarm beep.

“None of the lights came on, so I hit the power switch. I went back to bed but heard a loud knock on the door. My wife didn’t want me to answer, but I went to investigate.

“There was a lady who just said, ‘Get out of the house, there’s thick black smoke coming out of your roof!'”

Mr Shah went to investigate smoke coming from the attic room and although he could see no evidence of fire, his wife said she could smell smoke. “The lady did no wrong,” he said. “It was not a pretty sight.

“I came back downstairs, went out the front door, took a few steps back and looked up and it was a terrifying scene,” he said. “It was really thick black smoke that just rolled out.”

An alarmed Mr Shah woke his daughter and rushed into the pouring rain, where they saw a policeman drive by before fire crews arrived minutes later. The devastated family then watched in horror from a neighbour’s window as firefighters battled to control the blaze inside and outside their home for three hours.

Despite the good fortune of having the house struck by lightning – which could cost more than £60,000 to repair – Mr Shah says he is grateful no one was injured in the fire.

“When it’s your house, it’s a terrible thing,” he said. “But we were incredibly lucky. Fortunately, the lady warned us. That lady was providence… We went back to bed.

“I am extremely grateful to that woman and the emergency services who did an amazing job. We are extremely fortunate that we are all doing well.”

The lightning destroyed the family’s bridge, which they used as a cinema and which also houses a model railway, which Mr Shah took months to build during the pandemic. The master bedroom is located just below the attic and Mr Shah says firefighters told him the ceiling had collapsed on top of him and his wife might have been the first to know about the fire if she had been in bed, as she was done it. I couldn’t feel the heat above them.

Mr Shah appealed for the heroic woman who alerted him to the fire to come forward so he could thank her in person. The family have now managed to move back into the property, where they had lived since around 2011, but the lightning damage is likely to take months to repair and is now expected to cost more than the original estimate of £60,000.

“The loft is absolutely destroyed,” Mr Shah added. “It’s quite a frightening sight. We were very fortunate and lucky, but also really unlucky because lightning strikes houses and rarely.

“We’ve been both lucky and unlucky, really.”

Watch Commander Mark Woodward, from Watford Fire Station, said: “Our crews dealt with a fairly heavy fire on the roof of the property. We sent two crews to tackle the fire and they were able to enter the building using breathing apparatus and successfully stop the fire before it spread too far.

“Luckily, a passer-by alerted residents to the fire and everyone was safely out of the building when we arrived. From talking to the residents and looking at the fire pattern, we believe the fire was started by lightning. .”