The residents of an apartment block in Vélez Málaga received a fright when a lightning bolt hit the roof of the building.

One flat owner went outside to find that all was not well on the roof after being struck by a few million volts of electricity. It was 17.15h on the 19th of March and the place was Edificio Retama 2000 in Calle Del Río in Vélez, right in the centre of town.

The Mayor, Francisco Delgado, was suitably impressed enough to pop along moments later to check for himself and was pleased to announced that the building was not structurally damaged. The lightning strike’s bark was worse than its bite because the explosion was heard all over town.

Witnesses recount how the explosion was followed by the electricity supply in the block failing, so they went outside in the rain to see sparks and small pieces of masonry still falling from the roof. People didn’t know what to think but the idea that they had been hit by a lightning bolt was not among the immediate hypotheses. It was only when the municipal police and firemen turned up that it dawned on everybody that a “celestial reminder” had been the culprit

It appears that the discharge hit the television aerial, blasting a small hole in the roof. The reason that the bang seems so accentuated within the building was because the charge travelled down and blew up the main fuse box of the building.

(News: Velez Malaga, Axarquia, Costa del Sol, Malaga, Andalucia)