Two recent experimental findings on the formation of stripes in high-temper
ature superconductors show that substantial lattice effects are involved in
the onset of stripe formation. Huge phonon anomalies have been observed at
finite q-vector where this q-value correlates with doping. In addition, a
giant isotope effect on the onset temperature T* for stripe formation has b
een reported recently. We show here that the striped phase can be caused by
a strong nonlinear electron-phonon interaction which yields dynamical char
ge ordering on a mesoscale length scale and in a limited time range. A larg
e isotope effect on T* is obtained together with substantial phonon anomali
es.