{"id":363974,"date":"2026-08-06T03:02:16","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T03:02:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/363974\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T03:02:16","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T03:02:16","slug":"car-catches-fire-on-sanibel-causeway-after-apparent-lightning-strike-lee-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/363974\/","title":{"rendered":"Car catches fire on Sanibel Causeway after apparent lightning strike | Lee County"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, (WINK) \u2014 A car fire stopped traffic in both directions on the Sanibel Causeway Tuesday night after <a href=\"https:\/\/www.winknews.com\/news\/lee\/car-fire-stops-traffic-on-sanibel-causeway\/article_09ea98e5-dc64-45da-bf32-dd95988eacb0.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">lightning appeared to strike the vehicle<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Drivers who witnessed the incident told deputies they believe the car was struck by lightning. WINK News is working to learn more about the driver and their condition.<\/p>\n<p>Video from the scene shows the front of the car is basically destroyed. Many people online expressed surprise this happened because they believe rubber tires are supposed to protect drivers from lightning.<\/p>\n<p>                        <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"data:image\/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAQAAAADCAQAAAAe\/WZNAAAAEElEQVR42mM8U88ABowYDABAxQPltt5zqAAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==\" alt=\"vlcsnap-2026-08-05-21h41m25s390.png\" class=\"img-responsive lazyload full default\" width=\"1920\" height=\"1080\" data- data-\/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.weather.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">The National Weather Service<\/a> says that&#8217;s kind of true. If you&#8217;re inside and the window is closed, lightning will generally strike the antenna or the roof of the car and pass through the metal shell, through the tires, to the ground.<\/p>\n<p>However, the strike can cause serious damage to your car, especially your electrical system, or even start a fire. Bridget McEuen is all too familiar with that scenario.<\/p>\n<p>Her husband and daughter were driving down I-75 in 2022 when lightning struck their car.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Nine months, nine months it took to get the car completely fixed, all the electrical, everything electrical,&#8221; McEuen said. &#8220;That car was fried, and unfortunately, it took that long to get it completely back to the way it needed to be to be safe to drive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>McEuen is still driving that car today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SOUTHWEST FLORIDA, (WINK) \u2014 A car fire stopped traffic in both directions on the Sanibel Causeway Tuesday night&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363975,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[209,211,210,28,90029,2072,15471,1521],"class_list":["post-363974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral","tag-cape-coral-headlines","tag-cape-coral-news","tag-florida","tag-lightning-strike","tag-national-weather-service","tag-sanibel","tag-southwest-florida"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363974","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=363974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}