Lightning from an early morning thunder storm in Te Puke on Sunday killed a dog and split a redwood tree, with the remnants falling near the adjacent house.

The occupants of the house, a couple and their nine-year-old daughter, were unharmed.

The family's dog was found dead in the kennel, believed to have been electrocuted by the same bolt that destroyed the tree.

Te Puke fire fighters were called at 5am to a smell of burning the occupants noticed after the strike, says Te Puke Volunteer Fire Brigade deputy chief fire officer Dale Lindsay.

'I can remember just getting there and being presented with this mass of foliage all around the house.

'Parts of it struck part of the lean-to part of the dwelling and there had been a piece fired through one of the bedroom windows.”

The tree was about half a metre in diameter. The lightning strike carved off a big chunk about five or six metres long.

'And that was lying horizontal suspended in the air. I don't even know what was holding it up,” says Dale. 'It appears that one of the windows was even broken by the concussion from the lightning strike.

'Unfortunately the occupants lost their dog when it struck. It looks like he must have been electrocuted by the lightning bolt, because his kennel was kind of near the base of the tree.

'That was really sad. He was an old dog, but they were pretty cut up about it.”

The current travelled though the ground and somehow into the wiring in the house, where it blew one of the power points.

'There was a double plug in the kitchen with a toaster plugged into it, and it blew it out of its socket. There was charring around the plug and the wall where it had fed back through,” says Dale.

'So we went through the house with a thermal imaging camera to make sure there was no heat in the wires or anything around. We couldn't find anything.”

Dale's house is about two kilometres from where the lightning struck in No 3 road.

'The thunderclap that came when it happened, I was lying in bed thinking ‘whoa, that's probably the biggest thunderclap I have been anywhere near'.

'It was massive. Being right underneath and right in the middle of it must have been terrifying.”

The nine-year-old was removed from her bedroom when the thunder storm started. Her bedroom window was broken, leaving glass all over her bed.