Driver shares firsthand encounter of powerful lightning strike, truck fire near Cedar City

CEDAR CITY — A driver said lightning struck his truck as he traveled on I-15 Wednesday, starting a fire that decimated the vehicle.

Casey Pettus, a contractor, said at about 12:30 p.m. he was headed from St. George to Cedar City to make a bid on a possible remodel on a home his friend had listed for sale when he encountered a strong jolt in the middle of a downpour near mile marker 50.

Related reading: Do you know what to do when lightning strikes nearby?

“It didn’t feel like I hit anything, but just like my whole truck got hit and then, you know, a big flash of light,” Pettus said during an interview with KSL. “It was so fast. It took a second or two seconds to register, but it went through the truck, it went through me — not that I felt the lightning or anything. It’s just the jolt was so intense, and it felt like it just pressured me down. And then I was like, ‘Holy cow, I just got struck by lightning.'”

Pettus said the lightning bolt shut off his truck, and he had to “muscle” his steering wheel to get the truck off the road safely.

 

“I got off the road, and I watched the people that were immediately behind me, and they were just jaw-dropped as they, like, drove by,” Pettus said.

He said as light smoke began to enter the cab, he grabbed his phone and wallet. Within five minutes of exiting the truck, Pettus said it was fully engulfed.

“Uh, that’s my truck,” Pettus could be heard exclaiming in video he recorded on his phone. “My whole truck is up in flames.”

It was an improbable stroke of misfortune that followed shortly after Pettus discovered his rear driver’s side tire had blown out somehow and was leaking air. He said he was simply hoping to make it to the appropriate exit in Cedar City to get the tire repaired.

Related: Forest Service determines what sparked Utah’s largest fire so far this year

“It’s still even hard for me to comprehend that this even happened, right?” Pettus said.

First responders were also taken aback by the intensity of the fire, which Pettus said burned his truck up in less than 20 minutes.

“It was a weird scene to see,” said Utah Highway Patrol Cpl. Justin Faust.

Faust said dispatch had only informed him about a car fire and not the potential cause.

“This was my second in my whole career lightning strike-versus-a-vehicle incident, so it’s rare, but it does happen,” Faust said. “On my last incident where lightning struck a vehicle, it just fully wiped out their electrical system, but it didn’t catch their vehicle on fire, so I guess it’s just a random what-you’re-going-to-get.”

Faust acknowledged UHP has more comprehensive safety advice for rain and wet roads than it does for lightning.

“If you know that there’s lightning up ahead or you’re going into a lightning storm, you can pull under an overpass maybe, get off the highway, look for some cover like you normally would maybe,” Faust said. “That’s the unsettling part about Mother Nature being unpredictable.”

Pettus said his brother-in-law looked up the odds of what happened.

“He said he asked chat and it’s like 1 in 100,000,000,” Pettus said.

Pettus said he was in the process of dealing with his insurance company over what happened to the truck. He said he left his tools in the cab, and they did not survive the fire.

“I felt calm and composed the whole time, but I felt helpless,” Pettus explained. “Like, your truck is starting to catch fire from the inside. What do you do?”

Pettus said he was grateful he survived the ordeal.

“(It’s) super crazy,” Pettus said. “(I) definitely feel blessed and lucky to (a) be unharmed and be alive.”