Nevada County Picayune and Gurdon Times Newspaper Archive

Lightning Strikes City Hall

Lightning struck Gurdon's City Hall, knocking out the city police's radio system, along with two computer printers and four telephones.

However, according to Gurdon Mayor Rick Smith, the city was not without radio contact. The Gurdon Police Department switched over to the Clark County Sheriff's frequency until the problem was corrected.

The city's repeater and base station were hit by the bolt. Officer Frank Plasek was on duty at the time and received a nasty shock from the strike. Plasek, though, is all right and wasn't seriously hurt.

But the lightning strike placed other departments in somewhat of a turmoil.

City Recorder/Treasurer Tambra Smith was unable to print financial statements and paychecks until a printer could be interfaced with her computer system.

A parallel port on her computer was knocked out by the lightning.

Rick Smith, though, swapped printers with the water department and switched to a serial port with a translator so the computer could operate from a parallel port. He reconfigured the computer accordingly so the financial statements and checks could be ran off.

"We'll make it," he said. "I don't know if there was any problem with the fire department other than the phones, but we got those back on line quickly."

Representatives from Southwestern Bell Telephone responded early Wednesday to make the necessary repairs to the phone system.