| Grrr, lightning. On August 19th lightning struck the street light in front of my house. Thank you summer thunderstorms possibly influenced by some remnants from Ana. It took out my main computer (killed the mother board according to Best Buy when they tested it for us free), a network card on another computer, my intercom system that runs in every room of the house along with the doorbell, and popped a circuit breaker turning off our large freezer in the garage, though thankfully we thought to check the freezer and found it off, or we would have lost a lot of food. It came in over the electrical line and cable line. Things were mostly protected because we have surge protection on the entire house at the meter and surge protection strips for a lot of electronic equipment. However, we very unprepared for the surge that came over the cable. That is what killed the computer I think. My main computer had a cable come into it to watch TV. (It also may have partially come from the phone line/ethernet cables that come from the cable modem, which would have got it from the cable line coming into it the model since the modem and computer were protected by an electrical surge protector and that surge protector still works.) Then it jumped into the ethernet cable and ran across the house on a cable that our home network uses and killed the network card in my other computer, though the computer was spared from being as damaged as my main computer. Luckily, I have an external backup drive and make a backup monthly then unplug it from my main computer and store it in a fireproof safe. However, I have yet to check the hard drive in my main computer, so I might not even need to access the backup. (I'm actually not even sure how to access the backup and don't want to have to find out.) But our house was not the only one that was impacted. This is where things get interesting. The street light in front of our house seems like what got hit. It was working the previous morning and then it died with the power surge. Based on the damage at other homes with the light being at the center of the damage and no sign of a strike elsewhere, it seems like the lightning struck the city light pole because it was a high point. The lightning, because the pole was grounded, was directed to the bottom of the pole with a large grounding wire. (Basically, a street light is a lightning rod.) Then the lightning spread out as it went into the ground. Only problem, there is a power box, cable box, and all sorts of lines, like power and cable, that run right next to the pole. So of course the lightning spread across all of those. Then it started going everywhere. In the numbers below, each number represents a house that got hit, with a road being the equals sign. My house is number 3 and the power pole is between house 2 and 3. 1 2 3 4 ======= . 5 . . The strike went and killed something in the cable box between house 3 and 4. That temporarily knocked out my internet, phone (I have phone through my cable company) and cable (though it was only snowy) until they came out and fixed it. It traveled to my house through at least the cable line and may have then jumped to the electrical, but more likely the surge protection on the house has been hit too many times and it also came over the electrical line into the house. This is at least the fifth surge to do damage since we lived here, though this is the most expensive hit. (The only worse weather expense would be before I was born not too long after my dad built our house when a summer thunderstorm destroyed the screen over our pool.) We don't know where previous strikes hit, we just had damage from the surge. House 4 was the last house to realize they had damage, because I asked them twice about it and they did think they had damage, but ended up losing one TV and a washing machine. The reason why I asked twice is because we kept finding damage. We had no idea we were hit immediately after. I have heard thunder much louder than the strike that got us. However, I'm not so sure that in some cases it is less loud being right next to it. I was probably 75 feet away or less, and although it made me jump a little, perhaps from feeling it in the air even, I have heard some thunder that has been much more ominous. The first indication of a hit was a snowy TV. Then we noticed no phone and internet. Then I found my computer did not turn on. Then I said lets check the doorbell. That didn't work. Then we tested the intercom and radio system that goes through the house and that didn't work. Then I said check the freezer and we found it was off because off the circuit breaker that was tripped. So we turned that back on. Then when our cable company restored our service I found the network card on my other computer was not working. House 2 had a set top cable box damaged. House 5 got a set top cable box damaged too, but that still has not fixed some of their cable service. House 1 got hit the worst. Two TVs "blew up" and they lost their pool pump and jacuzzi pump. In addition to these 5 houses, one house about 15 houses away from me also got damage. They lost their intercom system/doorbell. The also had damage to their alarm system as they had a lot of trouble getting it off. They had to finally turn the power off and take out the batteries to it. They also had damage to a set top cable box and perhaps to a TV. The moral of this story is, you can't protect your home from surges with simply surge protection for your electrical lines. You also need to protect your cable line. I am currently looking into that. Our cable company does not provide anything, but did say that there is something you can buy to have surge protection over a cable line. Not simply one in a power strip, but something that you can put in your attic for when the cable comes into the house. The cable company will not allow you to put in their box. I am going to buy one when I find it. Of course my house was still lucky. I'm watching the local news right now about some homes that burnt after lightning strikes. I respect lightning much more. I'll be unplugging electronics much more often during a storm. A few days before we got zapped, we had a worse electrical storm, going by the amount of thunder, but not any damage. We received practically no rain, but there was a lot of loud thunder. That would be the storm to influence me to unplug something, but this one seemed weak in comparison. Although, for hours that night (this strike happened around 7PM on August 19th) into the distance I could see more cloud to cloud lightning strikes than I have ever seen in such a period of time, but it just wasn't as bad here at the time. But as we say with hurricanes, it only takes one. I will unplug not only electrical devices when I leave on vacations, but also all cables and phone wires. And when there is a storm, I'll do the same, even if it doesn't seem that bad. Most especially until I get protection for the cable for the entire house. And then also probably for the cable coming into the TVs in case lightning strikes my house directly so that it doesn't come over the cable line. My neighbor, house 5, once had their chimney explode from a lightning strike, so in some ways that light pole is actually good. I have a one story house, they have a two story house, so it is better to hit the light pole rather than my house. I'm going to post something in the future about what I find out about surge protection from cable lines, because I think it is something many people don't think about. (On August 18th, I would have said I had rarely thought about it just like the fact that the light pole acts like a lightning rod distributing the lightning right over all sorts of utility wires, which I had not considered at all.) My neighbor down the street mentioned something though about fiber optics, which we recently had installed in our area, and that is that those would not carry the surge. I like my cable service too much, but that is something to think about. (assuming you make sure the cable line no longer comes into your house) Starting to thunder here this morning again. Yippee, lol. |