Barossa family loses almost everything in house fire sparked by lightning strike
The wedding album of a prominent Barossa family is one of the few survivors of a devastating house fire caused by lightning.
SA News
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A Barossa Valley primary producer says his family has lost virtually everything they owned in a house fire caused by lightning strike from an intense electrical storm that struck the wine-growing region on Tuesday night.
“The clothes I was working in yesterday are the ones I’m in today and that’s all I’ve got,”
Mark Grossman, 56 told The Advertiser.
“I did find our wedding album and a box with my grandmother’s cutlery in it this morning that have been remarkably untouched.
“But everything else is gone.”
Mr Grossman said he had spent his entire life living in the stone cottage on Golden Gate Mines Road that was originally his grandparents’ home.
The chair of the SA Agricultural Bureau for the past nine years and his youngest son Stefan, 21, were at another property at Sedan feeding livestock when the storm hit.
His wife Jane and eldest son Lachlan, 23, were at the family home sited on a gentle slope between Angaston and Flaxman Valley.
“My wife rang to say there had been a big clap of thunder and large bang over the house and then my son rang to say there was flames and smoke within the home,” Mr Grossman added.
“We could see the electrical storm over the hills from where we were but you never think something like this will happen.
“Our home is on a slight rise but nothing out of the ordinary.
“It could happen to anyone – it’s just the luck of nature where it hits at the time.”
Mr Grossman said within a short period in 1992 two answering machines had been burnt out in the house after lightning struck nearby.
The crop farmer who also grazes sheep east of the ranges is well known in the Barossa community.
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He said his family spent the night at the home of one of their sons and that the phone had been “running hot” today with support.
“There are a lot of good people in the Barossa but at this stage we’re not sure what they can do,” he said.
“We’re fairly well insured and the insurance company had already been out at the site – but that doesn’t bring back the important things we’ve lost. They are just memories now.”
Firefighters arrived at the house just before 7pm on Tuesday night to already find it engulfed in flames.
They were called back early Wednesday morning after the blaze reignited.
There is no report of any injuries.