The son, Travis Barteck, was asleep in his room, when a lightning bolt came ripping through the ceiling.

"Travis called and said, you need to come home right away because lightning just hit our house. It blew a huge hole in his room and almost hit him," said Tia Barteck, Travis' sister.

Sparks Fire Department responded, expecting to see flames...but were only greeted by some shaken up neighbors and giant holes, blown through the walls and ceiling of the Barteck home.

"It appears the lightning hit the tree and the chimney and then came down through the wall into the front room, came across the wall, blew sheet rock out of the bedroom and buckled the wall a little bit."

The family dog, Poker was inside when the lightning hit, but he and his owners all came away unharmed. Their living room, on the other hand, and one bedroom, looked like a bomb went through.

"I saw the lightning crash and heard the explosion of thunder all at the same time, which I've never experienced before, and you couldn't believe how loud that explosion was," said a neighbor, Michael Lund.

Firefighters say anything can happen, but the chances of lightning hitting your home are slim. In the Truckee Meadows, it only happens about once a year.

"I don't think anyone knows what triggers this on a certain house. It's like a 'why me?' kind of thing," said Bill Finley of Sparks Fire.

"It's crazy that our house out of every house in our neighborhood get hit by lightning. It's weird. You hear stories and think it could never happen to you, but anything can happen."

They say lightning never strikes the same place twice, which is good news for the Barteck family, but you never can tell when a storm may come back through.

Firefighters say the son, who was inside when the lightning hit, is extremely lucky. They told me the noise was so loud, that if he had been awake when it struck, he could have permanently lost his hearing.