• Damage inside one of the laundry room areas.

MERIDIAN TOWNSHIP - Thunderstorms swept across the Mid-Michigan last night and left one Meridian Township apartment complex with fire damage inside the walls. No one was harmed and there was minimal damage to the interiors of the apartments. Even though the fire spanned several floors, the amount of smoke within the building was minimal.

Bill Priese, Chief of Training for Meridian Fire Department said, "well, it's kinda unique in how it came into the building. We think one of the stacks was hit, one of the vent stacks coming out of the top of the building got struck by lightning and it energized then the entire stack all the way down to the first floor where we had fires they couldn't see...it was behind the drywall."

Residents have been evacuated and will be displaced for at least a few days while crews clean up the damage.

The electricity from the lightning bolt supercharged some of the vents that are used by the dryers within each apartment. The metal makeup of the vents coupled with trace amounts of lint made it easy for the fire to catch and move throughout the building.

No fires broke out in the living areas of any of the residents rooms as the fires were contained within the walls. Insulation and drywall had to be removed and replaced throughout the building but the repairs were relegated to the laundry room areas.