AUGUSTA, Georgia (WJBF)- It is a winter tradition for many families to get a quality Christmas tree from Gay’s Christmas Tree Farm.
But nothing could have prepared owner Matthew Gay for what happened at 10 p.m. Saturday night.
“A very observant neighbor heard a very loud lightning strike. He looked outside and saw smoke, and then he saw a little bit of fire coming from a tree or the house—he wasn’t sure,” Gay said.
But it turned out that the smoke and fire came from Gay’s own house.
Her neighbor called her while she was three hours away on her family’s annual trip to Edisto Beach. They returned to find her home of 40 years badly damaged.
“It’s a little overwhelming. You’ve done a lot of work, a lot of things – this has been your home for 40 years, but these are material things. Like I said, we were able to save our important documents, no one was hurt – they’re building houses every day,” Gay said.
The lightning strike left debris in several places inside, along with bricks scattered across the courtyard outside.
“It’s unfortunate, but things happen. And again, I think God put us on Edisto Beach to save us,” Gay said.
The tree farm is four months away from reopening to customers–Gay says despite the setback, Christmas will go on.
“We have some beautiful trees this year, we have a lot of trees coming up. Our customers will drive by our house and say, wow, it looks like they just had a fire—and they’ll go back to the Christmas Tree Farm, everything will be back to normal,” Gay said. “We’ll get everything back, back to normal, we’ll have quality trees—everything will be business as usual from a customer standpoint.”
Gay told NewsChannel 6 that he has received tremendous support from his church, friends and family to get back on his feet.
“We’ve been very fortunate and blessed,” she said. “Fleming Baptist Church has been very supportive, we’ve had a lot of family friends help us pack up things around the house that we could salvage – their support has been amazing.”
There was no estimate of the total cost of the damage, but Gay said his insurance company planned to inspect the home in the coming days.
Gay’s Christmas Tree Farm will open to customers on Saturday, November 23 this year.
