GRANGER -- Thursday morning got off to a scary start in one neighborhood. A lightning strike in the Saddlebrook subdivision in St. Joseph County damaged two homes and sent a man to the hospital.

Firefighters say the lightning hit one home and they say it may have also hit the house next door, which is under construction. A man was working inside the house when he says he was hit.

Witnesses say the strike caught them off guard.

"It looked like it was maybe a general ... not a mist, just a moderate rain," said neighbor Roy Holliman.

But Holliman says the early morning shower quickly turned dangerous.

"It just sounded like a bomb went off. My daughter and I immediately came to the window and we just saw white smoke. And we thought the house was on fire," said Holliman.

Holliman's house was hit by lightning. It knocked out power and damaged the siding on his house. The lightning also left mysterious marks on his lawn.

"Eventually we came to the point where we started to realized that there were other holes in the lawn from the lightning strike through the trees," said Holliman.

Firefighters say it's possible the lightning also struck the house next door. The evidence was left on a piece of wood.

"It was perfectly smooth and then after lightning hit we came out and noticed it and it wasn't like that last night. Wood doesn't split like that unless it's hit by something," explained construction worker Kyle Reinoehl.

Reinoehl was working in the front part of house when the lightning hit.

"I saw a flash up there, and there was a light blown out, and the whole house just shook. I thought for sure something was coming down," said Reinoehl.

One of the workers was on a ladder in the attic taking some measurements. When the lightning struck, he fell off and landed on a piece of plywood.

Workers had to cut out two rafters and firefighters called in members of the technical rescue team to get the man down.

"They set up a rope system with pulleys and rope in order to lower him down. Had he been in very serious condition we would have got him out a lot faster. But we wanted to be safe because of the precarious condition he was in," said Harris Township Fire Chief John Vance.

It took firefighters about 30 minutes to get him out. The man was taken to Memorial Hospital, and his fellow workers say he's going to be OK.

A massive fire destroyed the same house in May. Investigators say that fire started somewhere inside one of the walls.