Weird things happened. It was a direct hit, a small flash and not a big bang DW says it was a loud bang but... The phones are dead (good thing I know a phone guy and will be fixed before bed, that would be me) took out both garage door openers, motherboard on a pellet stove, control box for the sprinkler system (new sod great ) 2 TV's one 36" the other 32" have weird colors now and I'm sure more to come. This all happened about 3 hour ago, the FD came and went as we were concerned about maybe smoldering wires in the attic area or the like. No visible damage on the outside or inside of the house.

We now need to get an electrician in to check every circuit, per the FD, 3 breakers tripped, not the main. We've already called the ins co and have a claim number for what we know is bad but still don't know the final damage. I'll keep this posted as things progress.

Our ins is Met Life home and auto will report on the service but so far the calls have been pleasant.

Update, the phones are working and I never lost my DSL but it fried a cordless phone alarm clock shorting out the line. Both TV's are now working after a power cycle, assuming a surge of power overloading a capacitor or something in the TV's. I'm not sure if this will cause long term damage or not, but the thought of new lcd TV's is out for now

 

a near-lighning strike caused the same thing with our t.v.'s last year. they cleared up, then they started doing the weird color thing more and more (we could clear them by turning them off then back on) until finally it resulted in a trip to Best Buy.

 

The TV's days are numbered. If you have an alarm system, make sure each sensor works.

 

This happened to me two years ago. It fried the computer, the water treatment filtering system, phones. etc... My Home owners insurance took care of it..

 

All:

Might want to think about using a UPS for TVs and computers. The $100 or so will save the system.

Hal

 

So time to upgrade, huh! You have a reason for that 52" widescreen now!!! The one i want!!!!

 

Update

Another tv bit the dust 21" in the bedroom, our select comfort air bed controllers don't work, the center channel on our home theater is dead but the thing that scared me the most.

I was working in a remote office on a callout for trouble, someone else was in the small office, we were talking and his pager started beeping. I look at him like are you going to stop that annoying beep and he's giving me the same look. I grab my pager always set to vibrate and you guessed it. My pager was beeping. I read the page and don't think much of it but while driving back I look at my pager again and it's been reset to factory defaults like the battery was pulled. Time starts at 12:00 am 24hrs not 12 hr and the date was 01/01/00. The current time on the pager was 18:45. So some quick math of what happened over 18 hours ago was exactly the time we were hit. I was wearing the pager at the time.

Kind of a sobering moment

 

got my first lightning strike last week in 71 years. out building 175 ft from house. most of switch box blown across the room, building on fire. took 2 cameras, 2 sat. receivers, one tv. if i had been 5 min. later would have lost building and 8n tractor and a lot of tools. got it under control till fire department got there.

 

One of my customers experienced a lightning strike across the parking lot from their office a few years ago and the power was unaffected but the surge came in thru the phone line. Took out 2 computers, 4 modems, and a fax in their office plus lots more in adjoining offices. The interesting thing was that the lightning struck the radio tower at the Emergency Management office across the parking lot and a bunch of cars parked in the lot near that tower would no longer start after the strike. I'm guessing that the lightning produced an EMP similar to what a nuclear bomb would and fried the electronics of anything within a certain distance of the strike.

Glad to hear that yours wasn't any worse than it was.

 

A few years ago a friends house was hit, long story short, two days later the house burned to the ground as a result of a short in the electrical box. The lightning caused some kind of a short-bridged one of the breakers or something like that.

I would get an electrician in and make sure the main box is OK. More often than not after a direct hit the main box requires replacement, in fact, most insurance companies require it be replaced as this is a very common issue after a strike.

Every appliance that is having a problem, or had one and now seems OK, will need replacing. That too is a very normal situation after a lightning strike. Whatever you do, or have done, get a lightning arrestor installed in your box. The grounding alone is not sufficient to deter the hit.

I have all my appliaces, computers, phone lines, etc on surge protected devices. It was a little costly to do everything but it got me a discount on my insurance premiums, about 3 years of the discounts and they will have paid for themselves. Not fullproof in a direct hit situation, but will protect everything on a close hit that feeds back through the ground circuits. The feed back does more damage sometimes over a direct hit.

CD

 

I live in the lightning capital of the world - - Tampa Bay area. I had some beautiful high palm trees, like 14 or them around the house. Came home from church to the sound of the alarm screaming and neighbors around my house. Palm debris was all over the driveway, but no emergency people there so I knew my phone line was out. Direct hit on two of the palm trees. Could not shut off the alarm until I pulled the battery backup. Then started looking. PVC pipe pieces laying all over my shrubs and lawn - - it followed my low voltage lighting beside the palms underground blowing all of that, then blowing the irrigation system where it passed by the wiring, took out the irrigation timer (pieces all over the garage interior) plus three solenoids on the stations and blew the neutral (that was fun finding), new TV plus 1 year old, one week old computer, complete alarm system and sensors, cable blown out of the ground, modems, high power sound amp plus surround speakers around the house, built in vaccum - - $7000 when all was done. One week later three more palms got it. No other damage on that one. I have no more tall palms - - gone. whew. That surge probably has ruined your tvs - - sorry. Another one of mine quit about 3 months later that was only 2 years old plus various other little things like blown power transformers on chargers that were plugged in - -stuff you don't catch at first. Have fun.
Bob