The residents of number 50 in the centrally located Calle Aragón in Palma never imagined that they would be in for such a scare on Sunday evening. Nor that they would be the epicentre of an event and a very intense electrical storm that hit their rooftop in particular. And more specifically against their television aerial, which directly and coldly received the impact of a bolt of lightning that illuminated the capital's sky for a few tenths of a second, seconds before a horrifying clap of thunder erupted that few will forget and many commented on in the minutes and hours that followed.
The lightning accumulated and discharged a power that was confirmed by Asinem - Association of Installation Companies of the Balearic Islands - to be 281,000 amperes. Or what is the same, which means starting up 21,600 washing machines at the same time, 12,256,000 five-watt LED bulbs or lighting up a dozen football pitches.
"I felt as if it was daylight from the kitchen", recalls one of the neighbours, who on Tuesday went up to the roof for the first time, where some workers were already working to repair, mainly, the gas installation. A service that was immediately cut off by the Palma fire brigade when they took action minutes after the incident, having been warned of a suspicious smell of gas and as a precautionary measure, at the same time as the street was left in darkness and the traffic lights were out of service.
"Two minutes before, I went out to throw out the rubbish and when I came back, we were startled by the roar of thunder, we had never felt anything like this before...", says another of the neighbours of the property, who shortly afterwards became interested in the state of the work and how the upper terrace, the highest in an extensive radius and with privileged 360-degree views over Mallorca, had been left.
The forceful impact left, at least until this Tuesday, the neighbours without lifts or intercoms, some of them even without Internet or connection to the grid "although we were never left without electricity, the differentials went off and little else", as confirmed by the electricity companies, and despite the fact that darkness took over this area of Palma and its surroundings - Pere Garau, García i Orell - as well as leaving about fifty traffic lights inoperative, which have been progressively recovering, with all of them expected to be fully operational on Thursday, despite being monitored by the Local Police.
They say, with the memory still fresh in their minds, that "the estate shook, we had never experienced anything like that in our lives, it was like a bomb", while they debate the quality of the materials and the construction of the building, which they praise for its capacity to respond to such events and at a time that startled those who were at home at the time, on a typical Sunday afternoon and evening.
After the lightning strike, a strong smell of gas alerted the neighbours, although the immediate and "effective" action of the Palma fire brigade helped to "calm" the spirits. "There was no panic, far from it". The residents of the thirteen-storey building "went out to the landings to comment on what had happened and little else", according to those who were there.
In the exact place of the events, the remains of the television antenna that received the lightning strike are scattered around the rooftop, although the pole that supported it is still standing, burnt, as is part of the wiring, as well as the aftermath of the gas installation, which was beginning to be repaired, and the small debris scattered around the terrace, after a possible explosion as a result of the power of the atmospheric phenomenon that everyone is still talking about several days later.
The rooftop at number 50 Calle Aragón was the scene of an event that kept the neighbours and many Palma residents on tenterhooks for a few minutes last Sunday evening. The impact of lightning on the antenna and the subsequent thunder caused a light and sound effect rarely remembered in the city.
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