Lightning?

I've never seen this before in the forest. A large straight quite mature Oak has a strip of bark peeled from the crown to the ground, and into the ground. Thin strips of bark hang from several places along the trunk and all around lay splintered pieces of bark; up to 15m from the tree. At first I though a branch must have fallen and pulled a strip of bark down with it, but there is no branch to be seen. What's more, on inspection it's clear the bark wasn't ripped or stripped from the trunk, more exploded with force from within, from under the bark. How else can the splinters 15m from the tree be explained? I mean splinters too. From 5cm to 30cm, and everything in between, and from 2mm or 3mm to no more than 10mm across. Some weird stuff. I spend some time wandering about and pondering and all I could think was it must have been lightning. Though, there were no scorch or burn marks to be seen. Like just the energy without the heat and fire. There was another oak close by which appeared to have experience something similar but not to the same extent. This tree is gnarlier and the damage line snakes across the trunk from a few meters up down into the ground; the bark here has been popped of the trunk in rough pieces about 30cm long. I'm sure the two events are connected. Crazy, nature always reserves the right to amaze and astound.