MARION, Ark. — It was already a chaotic night when Mother Nature took aim at Grady Miller, jolting him awake around one Friday morning.
“The sounds I heard it was like some popping noise or something,” he says.
He didn’t know it, but his house on Boulevard Saint Germaine had just been struck by lightning.
“I seen my TV was like blacking and popping,” he says, “I noticed the lights they were flashing off and went off.”
The bolt set a fire upstairs and it didn’t take long for Miller to notice the smoke.
“When I saw the smoke coming I said it’s time for me to get on out,” he says.
Miller, a Crittenden County Sheriff’s deputy, got on his radio to dispatchers who had firefighters at his house within minutes.
“They worked real good and they got it out,” he says.
But the flames left their mark. Much of Miller’s ceiling caved in and that left his first floor bedroom in shambles. Terrible destruction but Miller didn’t take it that hard.
“You know, it’s just material. It can be redone or replaced I figures,” he says.
But lives can’t and he’s grateful he got out with his. He’s also thankful his wife was out of town. She’s a heavy sleeper who wouldn’t have woken up as fast had she been home alone.
“When she lay down she gone, gone out like a light. So, she sleeps sound. You know, it really gotta be some awful loud noises to wake her up,” Miller says.
Miller says his insurance agent checked out the damage and told him it’s all covered by his policy.