OXFORD – People from as far away as Auburn reported seeing the lightning strike that ignited a barn on Robinson Hill on Tuesday afternoon.

When the powerful bolt hit, Oxford’s tanker engine was driving by Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway, answering a report of a fire on the Yagger Road.

It caused a delay of about five to seven minutes in responding to the fire, which destroyed the barn and ell and extensively damaged the 1899 home of Gay De Hart and Charles Howes, Deputy Chief Scott Hunter said.

Hunter acknowledged Wednesday that had Oxford’s engine been at the central station and able to get to the scene sooner, firefighters may have been able to knock down the fire before it reached the house.

But then again, he said, “With that old of a house, you just never know.”

Hunter estimated damage to the house of at least $100,000, most of it from water and destroyed ceilings.

“The building is still structurally sound,” he said.

The couple’s business, Shaker View Furniture, was located mostly in the ell portion of the house.

The barn was used for stabling their horses and alpacas.

Based on the numerous reports of people who actually saw the lightning strike, Hunter said he and Fire Chief Fred Knightly “are very comfortable” listing the fire as a lightning strike.

He said the barn, which had a lightning rod on top of the cupola, was very likely the highest point of land on the hill. The barn had been struck by lightning before.

“That’s the third old farmhouse we’ve lost on that hill,” Hunter said. An old farmhouse just up the road, at the corner of Town Farm Road, was struck by lightning and burned in the mid-1980s, he said.

He said the barn was too far gone to determine whether the lightning rod was properly grounded.

Lightning rods do not attract lightning, but conduct the electrical energy to a post in the ground using copper wire.

Even with a properly installed lightning rod, there are no guarantees when it comes to Mother Nature, said Sally Hersom of Maine Lightning Protection Co. in Bath.

“Every fourth or fifth hit is a hot hit. When the lightning hits, it is so powerful it just instantly burns everything it hits,” she said.

Hersom said there have been an unusual number of quite severe lightning-strike fires in Maine this year.

“It’s really been quite a violent year,” she said.