URBANA -- Firefighters believe a lightning strike may have caused a  fire that heavily damaged a southeast Urbana home Tuesday night.

According to Urbana Fire Department Division Chief Brian Nightlinger, firefighters were called to a fire at a one and a half story house at 2614 Wadsworth Lane at 8:44 p.m. Tuesday.

When firefighters arrived, they saw flames coming from the roof and fire in the attic.

“We got it knocked out really quickly, but we found a few embers glowing up on the roof and put out some hot spots,” Nightlinger said. “The best way to attack a fire like that is to go to the second floor and pull the ceiling and put the water up, and that’s what we did. We made an interior attack.

“Then the water being put in the attic made the ceiling drop. It was a collapse, but it was a drywall collapse.”

According to Nightlinger, three people and six pets escaped unharmed. The residents planned to spend the night with family members, he said.

Firefighters had the fire under control by 9:05 p.m., Nightlinger said, and no one was injured.

Wednesday morning, Fire Chief Mike Dilley said the house belongs to Dr. Sam Feinberg and his wife, Julie Savignac. The couple and their children were in the basement taking shelter during the storm when they heard a loud pop. They began looking around and had to go outside to see flames on their roof.

Dilley said the lightning apparently hit a cupola atop the house with such force that it knocked building materials across the street. The lightning shot through electrical wiring through the whole house. Dilley said there were receptacles in parts of the house far away from the fire that had burn marks.

Because of the wind from the storm and multiple roof lines on the house, Dilley said the fire was exceptionally difficult to fight.

“Everywhere there’s a roof line, there is a void space behind it. It (fire) got into all the void spaces. We chased fire through the whole house. We had to tear walls apart to get to the fire,” Dilley said.

“The winds became a problem. The roof being open, with the high winds, it almost became a bellows. We had multiple fires in multiple places as a result.”

Aggravating that was that the roof was covered by cedar shake shingles, Dilley said.

The blaze prompted him to call in two extra crews, which meant a total of 26 firefighters on the scene until about 3 a.m.

Dilley estimated damage to the home at  “conservatively $300,000.”