{"id":256764,"date":"2026-05-03T16:55:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T16:55:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/256764\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T16:55:07","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T16:55:07","slug":"lightning-may-have-sparked-fire-destroying-top-us-marine-science-lab-officials-say-florida","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/256764\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightning may have sparked fire destroying top US marine science lab, officials say | Florida"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Officials are investigating whether a huge fire that destroyed a top marine science laboratory at the University of South <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/florida\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Florida<\/a> may have been caused by a lightning strike.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Despite a massive response from local fire crews the Marine Science Laboratory building was completely destroyed after the blaze began on Saturday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Moez Limayem, the USF president, said that lightning storms in the area were being looked at as a possible cause of the enormous and devastating blaze at the advanced scientific institute.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cSt Pete Fire and Rescue said there was lightning reported in the area around at the time the fire started, but the cause remains under investigation,\u201d Limayem said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Michael Lewis, the St Petersburg fire chief, said more than 60 units and about 200 firefighters responded to the scene.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cWe will rebuild stronger than ever and my commitment is to do everything we can to move quickly to ensure that we have the best possible facilities to support our world class students, faculty and staff,\u201d Limayem added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Officials are investigating whether a huge fire that destroyed a top marine science laboratory at the University of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":256765,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-256764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}