Quick Thinking Saves Home Amidst Fire

The lightning storm that passed across the area Thursday night and Friday morning sparked a house fire in southern Fayette County.

Lightning struck the home of Walter and Mary Ann Wotipka on Vacek Loop south of Schulenburg. The home survived the fire thanks to some smart thinking by the homeowner and a quick response from the Schulenburg Volunteer Fire Department.

Schulenburg Volunteer Fire Department got the call around 2:30 a.m. Friday, April 21.

“It was a perfect storm of everything going right for once,” Proske said. “(Walter) was very instrumental in saving his own home.”

Proske saidWotipka pulled down the attic ladder and saw flames. He closed the attic, got his wife out of the house and made sure all the doors and windows were closed. Proske said Wotipka’s actions to seal the house helped to keep air from feeding the flames.

“I knew enough to do that,” Wotipka said. “But those guys were amazing. They got here so quick and came in a whole army.”

Wotipka said the lightning strike woke him and his wife.

“It about blew us out of bed,” he said. “It hit so hard. I suspected the whole house was going to go up.”

Proske said the couple were extremely lucky.

“The way he added onto the house over the years – there wasn’t a common attic space,” Proske said. “There are three separate attic spaces. That slowed the fire from progressing through the rest of the house. In a regular house like mine, the fire would have taken off.”

The fire department responded with six fire trucks and about 25 personnel. One of those volunteer firefighters was the homeowners’ son Ryan Wotipka.

“Never a good feeling when it’s your parents address coming across the pager,” Ryan Wotipka said in a Facebook post Friday morning. “Thank you so much to my fellow fireman for saving my family home this morning!”

Firefighters spent about two hours putting out the blaze. Proske said the fire damage was contained to the north side of the house where the lightning struck the roof.

The home is insured. “It’s got a lot of damage, but the main part of the house is in pretty good shape,” Wotipka said. “There’s a lot of smoke damage and we’ll have a lot of cleanup to do. I know it’s going to be a drawn out process. The main thing is we got out and no one got hurt.”