A freak lightning strike in a tiny Yorkshire Wolds village left a family's home in flames.

FIRE DAMAGE: Hannah's smoke-scarred bedroom at Little Garth in Thixendale after the TV exploded and caused a blaze Pictures: Paul Baker

The violent thunderstorm that swept through Thixendale - which was branded the village that time forgot because many residents lived there without TV until recently - left in its wake a trail of destruction.

TV sets exploded, telephone sockets and electrical wiring wrecked and a water main was damaged.

A bolt of lightning struck the television aerial on the chimney of Stephen and Wendy Lyus's semi-detached home yesterday afternoon, sending a huge electrical charge down the cable and flinging off roof tiles as it went.

A TV set in 14-year-old Hannah Lyus's bedroom burst into flames and the Sky TV decoder box in the lounge downstairs was blown across the room.

Hannah and her sister, Rebecca, 16, burst into tears when they returned home from school in Malton yesterday to see charred toys and other treasured possessions piled up in the driveway.

Mr Lyus, who has lived in the house since he was four years old, said: "There's nothing whatsoever left in our youngest daughter's bedroom."

It took firefighters more than 20 minutes to reach the remote village, but wearing breathing apparatus they used hose reels to bring the blaze under control within about 15 minutes.

Other upstairs rooms, the stairs and the hall were smokelogged.

A tender from Malton brought emergency sheeting.

Neighbour Michael Holmes - whose house was also smokelogged - had climbed on to the roof of the Lyus's home and used a hosepipe to quell the blaze until firefighters arrived.

Mr Holmes said: "I was decorating at a friend's house when my son Richard came to tell me lightning had hit the house.

"I was sitting on the roof with a hose until the fire brigade came. I was up there for about 25 minutes... but it seemed longer."

Mr Holmes's wife, Josephine, said: "The whole thing threw everybody into a blind panic.

"Unfortunately, it knocked off half the telephones in the village. So I was running around like a lunatic trying to find a phone."

TV sets at several neighbouring properties were knocked out.She eventually raised the alarm at the post office, while some of her neighbours drove out of the village - which is set in a deep valley - to obtain a mobile telephone signal.

A campaign by residents to get snowball-free terrestrial TV finally ended in success in June, 1997.

Villagers raised £8,000 towards the Thixendale Community TV initiative, which provided a communal aerial on a nearby hilltop and 39 individual aerials.

Only weeks before the new aerial went into operation, a lightning strike destroyed the old aerial, which had provided fuzzy pictures since the 1970s.

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