Toilet explodes after lightning hits septic tank of Florida home

Credit: DaytonDailyNews

Florida residents are used to lightning strikes, but this one might knock you off your seat.

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Sunday's lightning strike in Port Charlotte hit a septic tank and caused a toilet to explode inside the home of Marylou Ward, WINK-TV reported.

“It used to be our toilet,” Ward told the television station. “We have nothing now.”

Ward's plumber said lightning hit the methane gases that had been building up in the septic pipes, and the result was a shattered toilet.

"We come in here and the toilet was laying on the floor," Ward told WINK. "There's all pieces everywhere. Pieces everywhere."

The couple's plumber said the lightning hit the methane gases that had built up in the pipes from the poop, destroying all of Ward's indoor plumbing, the Miami Herald reported. The indoor plumbing, including the septic tank, was destroyed, WINK reported.

“It just did all of that damage and exploded things into the road and so on in half a second,” Charles Allen, the Wards' neighbor, told the television station.

Nobody was hurt, but Ward said she is taking no more chances when storms hit the area again.

"I'm not taking any showers and not going to the bathroom....forever," Ward told WPTV. "Not when it's thunder-storming, and down here that's a lot."

"I'm just glad none of us were on the toilet," Ward told WINK. "That's the main thing."

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