A lighting bolt directly struck Fast Forward Weekly’s rooftop, spitting brick debris throughout the publisher’s office, destroying his computer. “It’s dead; totally fried,” Ian Chiclo says of his computer.

An electrician who investigated the rooftop after the June 16 electrical storm says the lightning ran through the wooden floors of the Ramsay-area, two-storey building and left a cigarette-like burn in the cedar rooftop.

Some staff reported seeing an electrical flash throughout the office.

Peter Hemminger, Fast Forward Weekly’s music & film editor, felt an electrical shock run from his computer mouse up his arm. “It took me a minute to realize that my arm was raised in the air,” he says.

No one was seriously hurt. And even though most office computers didn’t have Internet for the better part of the day, this week’s newspaper was produced with the usual lightning speed.