BROOKSVILLE – A strange glow in the sky alerted neighbors to an electrical fire at the Kathryn Butler Gallery early Saturday.

A wire that linked the exterior circuit box and the interior wiring failed, causing electricity to arc back and forth, igniting the cedar shingles outside the gallery and starting a fire inside the wall, Brooksville Fire Chief Bill Leck said Sunday.

Nancy Brown, who lives just a few houses from the gallery, noticed the odd light just after 6 a.m. Saturday, and walked down to the gallery to investigate.

When she discovered the fire, Brown alerted the local fire department.

Just a few moments later, Butch Czerwinski, proprietor of the neighboring Buck’s Harbor Market, saw the light from his home, located above the shop.

“I could see the electrical arcs – they were lighting up the entire neighborhood,” he said Sunday. “It was just like these bolts of lighting without thunder, these flashes of white light.”

Initially, Czerwinski assumed the electricity was coming from a downed wire – the result of recent winter storms.

But when he stepped outside to investigate at about 6:30 a.m., he found the gallery building in flames less than a foot from his home and business.

“It was already on fire,” he said. “There was a hole right through the side of the building.”

Czerwinski and several volunteer firefighters used his chemical extinguisher on the flames. When 15 members of the Brooksville Volunteer Fire Department arrived moments later, the exterior fire was nearly extinguished, Leck said.

Firefighters also used dry chemical extinguishers to fight the fire because electric power still was being pumped into the building, and using water in the immediate area of the circuit box could have created a danger of electrocution.

The chemical systems also cause far less water damage, Leck said.

The fire was completely extinguished by 8 a.m. No one was injured and the cause of the fire, although rare, is not considered suspicious, he said.

The gallery, owned by summer resident Kathryn Butler, is open only during the summer tourist season. Butler is spending the winter in Florida.

The few pieces of artwork and furniture that were in the building during Saturday’s fire were well covered and were not badly damaged.

Thick smoke caused some slight internal damage at the gallery, however, Leck said.

The gallery’s electrical wiring was nearly destroyed, bringing damage estimates to between $5,000 and $8,000, he said.

“The wiring is in pretty bad shape all around the circuit panel,” Leck said. “It destroyed the wires.”

Thanks to the quick response of volunteers, most of the damage was restricted to the single wall where the circuit box was located. Had the fire continued to burn, the entire block, including a church, the market and several homes could have been destroyed.

“It’s a really built-up area. If it had really gotten going, we would have had two or three buildings on fire,” Leck said. “It’s just a wonder that it wasn’t any worse.”