Overview

• At about 11 a.m. on August 11, a Mount Pleasant officer’s dashcam recorded a lightning bolt hitting a utility pole at Hwy 17 and Shelmore Blvd.
• The strike produced a brief fireball, brought down power lines and closed U.S. Highway 17 between Shelmore and Anna Knapp boulevards for roughly two hours.
• More than a dozen officers and CSOs managed traffic at seven intersections for about three hours following the outage.
• Dominion Energy crews removed the fallen wires and fully restored electricity within hours of the strike.
• The Mount Pleasant Police Department’s rock-backed social media post of the footage has gone viral as a striking safety reminder, and officials confirmed no injuries.