By Tony Kukulich
Beaufort’s City Hall reopened Monday morning after a lightning strike Thursday afternoon knocked out much of the building’s environmental controls.
The strike shook much of the downtown area and rattled windows in the offices of The Island News while the area was enjoying mostly sunny and clear skies.
“Unfortunately lightning took out the HVAC at City Hall, but fortunately no one was hurt and the equipment has been fixed as of Monday morning,” said City of Beaufort Mayor Stephen Murray.
The building was struck around 4:30 p.m., Thursday, July 14, Deputy City Manager Reece Bertholf said. There was no physical damage to the structure of the building and no resulting fire. Damage appears to have been contained to the integrated environmental management system. There was no loss of any of the city’s data.
“We actually didn’t lose any network connectivity,” Bertholf said. “Email and phones stayed up. All of our data backups, both onsite and remote, everything’s fine.”
City Hall, the Beaufort Police Department headquarters and Beaufort City Municipal Court are all housed in the building, which is located at 1905 Boundary Street. With the air conditioning system knocked out, temperatures quickly climbed into the 80s. The facility was closed to the public all day Friday, and a public meeting scheduled to discuss the city’s stormwater study was hurriedly moved to a Beaufort/Port Royal Fire Department station on Ribault Road.
By Monday morning, the environmental control system was up and functioning enough to allow City Hall to be reopened to the public.
“We are back up and functioning with regard to air conditioning,” Bertholf said Monday morning. “We still have some electrical components that are going to need to be evaluated and addressed. Whether they need to be fixed or replaced, we’re really not sure yet. But everything was able to come back online this morning.”
Bertholf said that the cost of the damage caused by the lightning strike has not yet been calculated, but he expects that insurance will cover the city’s expense.
“This is not the first time that we’ve had electrical issues due to lightning,” Bertholf noted. “I’d hate to venture a guess on what the cost will be, but we are tracking it for an insurance claim.”
Temperature, humidity and fresh air exchange are all managed by a Johnson Controls system that the city had installed several years ago as part of an energy saving effort.
“There are protections in place that do appear to have worked and done what they’re supposed to to protect the most sensitive items that run this,” Bertholf said. “We’re just now establishing all of the connections that were lost.”
Bertholf, who was previously fire chief with the Beaufort/Port Royal Fire Department, took the opportunity to remind residents of the danger lightning presents.
“I’d be remiss if I didn’t go back to my public safety roots,” he said. “The sun was shining outside City Hall when this lightning strike occurred. People should be mindful that, while we don’t live our lives in fear of lightning, it can strike without warning in proximity to storms that may not necessarily be over top of you. It was not raining and the sun was out. It was quite remarkable.”
Tony Kukulich is a recent transplant to the Lowcountry. A native of Wilmington, Del., he comes to The Island News from the San Francisco Bay Area where he spent seven years as a reporter and photographer for several publications. He can be reached at tony.theislandnews@gmail.com.
