A Utah contractor says he is lucky to be alive after a lightning strike turned his 2021 Ford F-150 Hybrid into a burned-out shell while he was driving through a storm.

Casey Pettus was heading north on Interstate 15 from St. George to Cedar City around 12:30 p.m. Wednesday when the terrifying incident unfolded near milepost 50, according to the Utah Highway Patrol.

Pettus told KSL he had already realized he was dealing with trouble on the road. His rear driver’s side tire had blown out and was leaking air, and he was trying to make it to a Cedar City exit so he could get it repaired.

Then, without warning, lightning hit.

“It was so fast,” Pettus told the outlet. “It took a second or two seconds to register, but it went through the truck, it went through me — not that I felt the lightning or anything.”

He said the jolt was so powerful it felt like pressure pushing him down.

“And then I was like, ‘Holy cow, I just got struck by lightning,’” he recalled.

Photos from the scene show just how dramatic the aftermath was. In one image, flames can be seen shooting from the truck as a thick column of black smoke rises into the stormy sky. Another photo shows the front half of the pickup nearly destroyed after the vehicle became fully engulfed in flames within about five minutes.

The Utah Highway Patrol said the truck was a total loss.

Pettus, a contractor, had been driving to Cedar City in a heavy downpour to bid on a possible remodeling job at a home a friend had listed for sale. After the lightning strike, his truck shut down, forcing him to “muscle” the steering wheel so he could get safely off the highway.

Once he made it to the side of the road, Pettus said the drivers behind him were stunned by what they had just witnessed.

“It didn’t feel like I hit anything, but just like my whole truck got hit and then, you know, a big flash of light,” he told KSL.

As smoke began filling the cab, Pettus grabbed his phone and wallet and got out. But his tools, which were left inside the truck, were destroyed in the fire.

“It’s still even hard for me to comprehend that this even happened,” he said.

Pettus said he remained surprisingly calm during the ordeal, but also felt completely helpless as he watched the fire spread.

“Your truck is starting to catch fire from the inside,” he said. “What do you do?”

Despite the shocking condition of the truck, Pettus was not injured. He said the whole experience was “super crazy,” but he feels blessed and lucky to be alive.

He is now working with his insurance company over the loss of the truck and his tools.

UHP Cpl. Justin Faust described the fire inside the lightning-struck pickup as a “weird scene to see.” He said storms can be dangerously unpredictable and suggested that drivers caught in lightning may want to get off the highway, pull under an overpass or find some form of cover when possible.

“That’s the unsettling part about Mother Nature being unpredictable,” Faust told KSL.

Ladd’s Towing, based in nearby Kanarraville, responded to remove the burned vehicle from the roadway. Tow truck operator Mark Hodgins said Pettus was “understandably shaken up.”

“He lost his truck, and he had quite a bit of expensive tools in it that he lost,” Hodgins told KSL.

Hodgins said that in eight years of towing, he had never before responded to a truck that had been struck by lightning.

UHP Lt. Zach Randall told St. George News that no other vehicles were involved in the incident. However, the fire caused delays in northbound traffic, and both lanes were briefly shut down.

The scene was cleared by around 5 p.m. local time.