Lightning-Sparked Blaze Interrupts Kate Winslet's R&R

What should have been a vacation for Kate Winslet turned into a nightmare when the house where her family was staying in the Caribbean was struck by lightning and caught fire.

Winslet, her boyfriend and her two young sons fled their host's home on a private island in the Caribbean in the middle of the night after flames engulfed it, E! Online reports.

Their host Richard Branson said he believed the fire had broken out as a result of a lightning strike as Tropical Storm Irene passed the island. The storm had, according to Branson, brought winds of over 90 m.p.h. and a lightning storm around 4 a.m.

Nobody was injured in the fire, fortunately — not even Branson's 90-year-old mother, whom he helped evacuate.

Branson himself was staying in a different house nearby, in an admirable display of hospitality to his 20 guests, when the enormous blaze began. The fire still wasn't out when he spoke with Britain's Press Association Monday morning.

There's no word on what Winslet and her family intend to do — stick out the vacation elsewhere, or give up and go home? — now that their vacation home is largely cinders.

After rocketing into the public eye as Leonardo DiCaprio's co-star in "Titanic," Winslet has staked her career on heady indie movies and Oscar-oriented Hollywood drama. She won a Best Actress Oscar for her role as a Nazi guard in 2008's "The Reader."

Selected reading: E! Online, Today

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