Nurse Jennifer Lyons has praised her neighbours, after they rushed to her aid when she was injured as lightning struck her Chippenham home.

She was inside her house on Larkham Rise with her 17-year-old daughter April when it struck on Saturday at around 1.30pm.

She was thrown across the room as metal sockets and plaster were blasted from the walls.

The house is still without internet, phone lines or hot water.

The storms blew out the television signal across the street, after a bolt of lightning struck a Sky TV dish, causing damage to four terraced properties. A pet rabbit in a neighbouring garden also died from shock during the storm.

Miss Lyons said: “I was in my room on the phone when it hit. I was knocked right back, and April came in, and she said ‘mum my room’s on fire, we have been hit’.

“I was so confused; I didn’t know what was happening. There was so much debris everywhere; switches had been blown off the wall, it was like an inside bomb.”

Despite suffering light-headedness and a bump to her forehead, Miss Lyons, who works at Sheldon Lodge Care Home in Chippenham, was otherwise unharmed.

She said: “You think you would be safe from lightning in your own home.

“The fireman said it was one of the most unusual cases they had been to, and I was lucky as I had flip flops on, as if I hadn’t been grounded like that the chance of us still being here is very small.

“The neighbours were amazing, they all queued up outside my house to help, but it’s a horrendous mess to clean up.”

When friends heard the lightning hit they rushed out in the rain to help.