CHEROKEE COUNTY, Ga — A family says lightning struck their home during a storm this week.
They lost everything, including their dog.
Channel 2′s Christian Jennings went to Breedlove Road, northeast of Canton in Cherokee County, where a mom and toddler are safe thanks a neighbor who rushed in to help.
Oliva Jock says her family lost everything in a fire earlier this week at their home.
“My daughter’s birthday was just a few days ago and all her brand new stuff got destroyed,” Jock said.
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A neighbor, Joe Darvish, said he saw lightning strike the home.
“It was kind of crazy. It hit the house and we saw some smoke and thought it was just from the lightning,” Darvish said. “After about two minutes we noticed the smoke was starting to billow, get a lot heavier.”
Jock said at the time, she and her 2-year-old son were asleep.
“We were woken up by a huge boom, like sounded like it was right in the house,” she said. “And so I jumped up and started looking around, and I walked onto my front porch and smoke was pouring out of this bag of clothes.”
She told Channel 2 Action News that within seconds, the porch was engulfed in flames.
Neighbors didn’t hesitate; they rushed over to help.
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“And the flames were going over the canopy of the front porch, and I saw her stick her head out with her son in her arm and she thought, I think that she was in kind of shock,” Darvish said. “I just ran in there, I handed her kid off to Joseph up here and went back inside and grabbed the young lady and helped her get outside through the flames.”
The Red Cross is providing some assistance, but the family is struggling to figure out where they go from here.
They’re also grieving over the loss of the family dog.
“She didn’t make it out because the flames got so high, I just had to get me and my son out and I couldn’t find her,” Jock said.
Fire officials said they’re still investigating the cause and can’t rule out lightning at this point.
Anyone interested in assisting the family has been asked to visit their GoFundMe page.
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