Here is my story of St. Anthony's Church...
A line from the litany of Saint Anthony of Padua happens to read...
From thunder, lightning, and storms, St. Anthony deliver us. I am not Catholic...but I can still find that interesting.
St. Anthony’s of the Desert, a church in Scottsdale, Arizona, sits at 130th St. and Shea Blvd., where town starts dissolving up the side of the McDowell range and finally changes into open desert. Isolated among the cactus and a rugged saddle-shaped landform, St. Anthony’s Church is high enough to afford a view of distant city lights, and oncoming monsoon storms as well. A few years ago, I used the church parking lot one night to photograph CGs as they moved in from the south, and was able to pull this shot.
In July 2004, a similar electrical storm was pummeling the saddle-shaped mountain again so I headed over to St. Anthony’s to try for the CGs. Only this time, I was driving around in total darkness because the power had blown so all the streetlamps and the city lights were out (a good thing for lightning photography). However, I missed St. Anthony’s driveway in the darkness and pounding rain.
Rather than doubling back, I opted for a patch of dark desert near a small side road called 128th St., about 1/4 mi from the church, and began to set up for some pictures from inside my vehicle, as rains were heavy and lightning was everywhere. I remember noting that my car clock read 1:00am on the nose. It was late but even after hours of chasing, there was still a lot of action, and I always work the storms until they are done. I never know when the next big night will come.
At this point, the monsoon storms were really throwing down some solid CGs all over the desert. The lightning was quite fierce. I worked it until its swan song, and finally when it quieted for good, I headed for home.
The next morning in the paper, I couldn’t believe my eyes. At precisely 1am, St. Anthony’s of the Desert Church had taken a direct hit from a lightning strike. The lightning bolt hit the steeple, traveling down and burned a hole in a hymnal that was sitting on the altar. Had I been there as planned, I would have had a mind-blowing shot, but in the process, might have jumped clean out of my skin! Luckily, the church was in one piece, I was in one piece, and despite some damage to the sanctuary, Zeus’s best effort couldn't take the church down.
So what is with St. Anthony? Massachusetts 1997:
Two hours later, storm clouds rolled into New Bedford. A neighbor watched in horror as a streak of lightning split the sky, striking the brass atop the church. As the highest point in New Bedford, the spire of Saint Anthony had taken direct hits many times before. This time, the lightning did not race harmlessly into the ground. The cable grounding the rods had broken, and it had not occurred to Father Levesque to check it. Now the unchanneled lightning bolt sparked a fire under the slate roof. A New Bedford firefighter who happened to be standing near the church quickly called in the alarm, and engines arrived within minutes. The blaze was confined to the roof and, amazingly, did not spread. "It was as though there was this protective hand," Patricia DeAndrade says.-Adoremus.org
And what would be a more fitting name for this hospital?
From
www.stanthonyhosp.org located in Denver, CO.
St. Anthony Central Hospital serves as headquarters for an international resource studying the effect of lightning on the human being. The Lightning Data Center (LDC) was founded in 1992 by Drs. Michael Cherington and Philip Yarnell, in association with St. Anthony Hospitals. It unites individuals from medical, scientific and related professional fields, as well as the public to explore natural lightning phenomena and issues.
If the lightning ever gives me a fright, I guess a little saint protection couldn't hurt!
