President Biden, while visiting the fire-ravaged remains of Maui, said he knows what it is like to lose a home, recalling that 15 years ago lightning started a fire in his residence in Delaware.
‘I don’t want to compare difficulties, but we have a little sense, Jill and I, of what it was like to lose a home,’ Biden said. ‘Years ago, now, 15 years, I was in Washington doing ‘Meet the press’… Lightning struck at home on a little lake outside the home, not a lake a big pond. It hit the wire and came up underneath our home, into the…air condition ducts.
‘To make a long story short, I almost lost my wife, my 67 Corvette, and my cat,’ the president added.
This is not the first time Biden has recalled the story.
In November 2021, he said his house burned down with his wife Jill Biden inside, before trying to correct himself.
At the time, he was speaking in New Hampshire about the bipartisan infrastructure plan when he said, ‘Without this bridge, as I said earlier, it’s a 10-mile detour just to get to the other side. And I know, having had a house burn down with my wife in it – she got out safely, God willing – that having a significant portion of it burn, I can tell: 10 minutes make a hell of a difference.’
He also mentioned the story in 2013, claiming a fire ‘destroyed a significant portion’ of his New Hampshire home.
A 2004 report from the Associated Press, archived by LexisNexis, said lightning struck the Bidens’ home and started a ‘small fire that was contained to the kitchen.’ The report said firefighters got the blaze under control in 20 minutes and that they were able to keep the flames from spreading beyond the kitchen.