Last night on the way home I was listening to the news on the radio and they were reporting on the storms that hit Sydney on Friday afternoon. “One apartment block at Hillsdale had to be evacuated after it was struck by lightning.” “Hey”, I thought “That’s the place I’ve just been fixing.” and the following morning there were pictures on the TV news.
The place we were working on was a typical 1970s three storey block of flats with a central staircase half way down the building. The lightning had struck the roof directly above the stairwell. It blow a massive hole in the roof, scorched a hole through the ceiling and blew (as in blew off the wall) every light fitting and light switch in the stairwell. The whole stairwell was awash with broken glass and sundry bits of light fitting.
Luckily we had access through the manhole into the ceiling space and started gathering the intact roof tiles to put them back on the roof. There was also a flimsy piece of black plastic flapping on the breeze which had been the attempt by the fire brigade to fix the hole. In the meantime a cherry picker had arrived to take two of us onto the roof from the outside and clean up the debris scattered about the roof.
By working simultaneously inside and outside the roof we were able to quickly replace the intact tiles and ‘move’ the multiple small holes into one big hole for tarping. I had worked on a very similar type job at Randwick during the June 2007 storms so we used the same techniques. However the damage in that case was from a tree falling on the roof and nowhere near as impressive as the damage done by the lightning. We finished the job at 11pm after about four hours and went home for a well earned rest.
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