Overview

• On the night of June 23, a storm in Lower Saxony produced a strike that hit a church in Wieren and triggered nonstop bell ringing from around 1 a.m.
• Police reported the lightning likely inflicted a defect on the old bell mechanism, preventing it from stopping on its own.
• Residents in the municipality of Wrestedt in the Uelzen district were awakened by more than an hour of continuous tolling.
• The churchwarden manually silenced the bells after being alerted, bringing the unexpected disturbance to an end.
• Church officials and experts have begun examining the storm-damaged mechanism to determine the precise cause of the malfunction.