Lightning hit the house

[Ichinisan]

The phone and cable boxes were blown of the side of the house and there are fragments everywhere. Cable modem and WiFi router are completely fried. One of the outlet covers in a bedroom was blown to bits. A bunch of circuit breakers were tripped. One breaker for air won't reset. USB ports on desktop PC wouldn't work until the PC was rebooted. The house filled with the smell of spent fireworks and it took a while for the smell to go away.

Since it appears to have hit the side of the house with the telephone and cable boxes, why didn't it take the shortest path to ground? Would be nice if it didn't affect anything inside. Is this indicative of a wiring / grounding issue?

 

[Ichinisan]

PS4 Pro is dead. Also roommate's TV and box fan.

 

[herm0016]

call the insurance, document everything and get an election to come. it could have burned insulation anywhere in the system and they could be future fire hazards anywhere in your walls.

 

[Rifter]

call the insurance, document everything and get an election to come. it could have burned insulation anywhere in the system and they could be future fire hazards anywhere in your walls.

This x2

 

[Ajay]

Sorry dude, hope you can get everything up and running soon.

 

[PowerEngineer]

Since it appears to have hit the side of the house with the telephone and cable boxes, why didn't it take the shortest path to ground? Would be nice if it didn't affect anything inside. Is this indicative of a wiring / grounding issue?

A bolt of lightning is packing currents in the 20-100 kiloamp range. From the point it hit your house, the current is (ideally) going to follow all possible paths to ground with the distribution being (largely) determined by the relative impedances of those paths. While most of that current did find more direct paths to ground, even a very small percentage of that 100 KA that follows paths that include your internal wiring is going to do some damage. I hope it doesn't turn out to be too serious.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Ouch that sucks.

Our CO got hit with lightning, before I worked here. Coworker said he actually felt the hair on his arms go straight, and lights dimmed slightly, then he heard what sounded like a truck hitting the building. He went outside to check and people were pointing at the building saying it hit the GPS antenna and it actually flew off the building, on fire and was on the ground.

It blew a whole whack of equipment in the building. Lots of cards in the DMS100, etc...

Then a few years ago lightning hit the GPS antenna of another of our major offices. Same deal they had all sorts of random failures. Also cooked the main building ground completely.

I guess with that much power it does not only take the path of least resistance it takes every path it can, and even arcs through stuff. One tech was in the DMS room and said he actually saw a bolt fly across the racks of equipment. Must have been a crazy sight to see. That was a fun night shift... it blew all the GPS antennas so we had to fly them a spare from our office. It also causes so many weird alarms and failures, and stuff that lingers and does not fail right away etc... took almost a year to get everything right.

Also, it seems GPS antennas make great lightning rods lol.

 

[Iron Woode]

OP is damn lucky the house didn't burn down.

Definitely get the house and electrical inspected for the sake of safety.

 

[Ichinisan]

Ouch that sucks.

Our CO got hit with lightning, before I worked here. Coworker said he actually felt the hair on his arms go straight, and lights dimmed slightly, then he heard what sounded like a truck hitting the building. He went outside to check and people were pointing at the building saying it hit the GPS antenna and it actually flew off the building, on fire and was on the ground.

It blew a whole whack of equipment in the building. Lots of cards in the DMS100, etc...

Then a few years ago lightning hit the GPS antenna of another of our major offices. Same deal they had all sorts of random failures. Also cooked the main building ground completely.

I guess with that much power it does not only take the path of least resistance it takes every path it can, and even arcs through stuff. One tech was in the DMS room and said he actually saw a bolt fly across the racks of equipment. Must have been a crazy sight to see. That was a fun night shift... it blew all the GPS antennas so we had to fly them a spare from our office. It also causes so many weird alarms and failures, and stuff that lingers and does not fail right away etc... took almost a year to get everything right.

Also, it seems GPS antennas make great lightning rods lol.

Yeah. Still discovering more damaged stuff. Found a scorch mark where my roommate's TV stand bolts to the TV. Since the electrical outlet on the opposite side of the room had the wall plate blown to pieces, I suspect there had been a bolt across the whole room between the TV and the destroyed outlet.

 

[Ichinisan]

...and I guess I never mentioned it in this thread: My car was just a few yards from the lightning strike and it won't start. This is going to be fun

 

[pcgeek11]

...and I guess I never mentioned it in this thread: My car was just a few yards from the lightning strike and it won't start. This is going to be fun

Your car is probably toast. The same happened to my brothers car. Fried all of the ECUs and they totaled the car.

 

[Humpy]

call the insurance, document everything and get an election to come. it could have burned insulation anywhere in the system and they could be future fire hazards anywhere in your walls.

Plumbing system and the structure of the house can be damaged too. Lightning strikes are crazy destructive.

 

[CZroe]

You mentioned that the breaker doesn’t reset but you didn’t mention that it got the HVAC blower even though it was the first thing we were aware of. It’s toast.

We hadn’t moved most of our stuff in yet, so no renter’s insurance. If the car is fixable then we really didn’t lose all that much. Landlord, OTOH, may have a lot to deal with (electrical wiring + HVAC).

It was so weird because the lights didn’t even blink and yet it definitely seems to have come at full-force.

Cable modem:

https://imgur.com/g1epOwM

Cable/phone utility boxes:

https://imgur.com/e8HmhvT

https://i.imgur.com/kDqcyHL.jpg

Fire department checking it out:

https://i.imgur.com/8AdXNnF.jpg

Piece of cable utility box blown across the yard:

https://i.imgur.com/DvLmlBp.jpg
(phone utility box was completely obliterated; tiny chunks across two yards up to and beyond the neighbors’ house)

Scorched piece from stand holding toasted TV:

https://i.imgur.com/x5JvU4t.jpg

“No, [CableCo], unplugging the modem and plugging it back in is not going to help:”

https://i.imgur.com/FL2uTHN.png

They look fine but the TV, box fan, and PS4 Pro are all toast:

https://i.imgur.com/5QAtYQK.jpg
(fan is brand new)

 

[UsandThem]

Were any of the items plugged into surge protectors / UPS battery backup units?

I know direct lightening hits can still damage stuff that is on surge protectors, but just curious.

 

[CZroe]

Were any of the items plugged into surge protectors / UPS battery backup units?

I know direct lightening hits can still damage stuff that is on surge protectors, but just curious.

Cable modem and Asus RT-AC68U were. Not sure about the roommate’s TV and the PS4 Pro. I’ll have to ask.

On a similar note: I had just replaced the fuse on a Sega CD model 2, which are notorious for having blown fuses, and I had left it looping the Sonic CD attract mode while it was directly plugged into the wall. The screen was blank when I got back to it but it appears fine. The fuse didn’t blow even though I used one rated for HALF the amps! It should have been even more likely to blow than your typical Sega CD (just look at it funny and they go *poof*).

I just wanted to test it and make sure it worked before the Analogue Mega Sg launches, so I didn’t wait for the proper 2.5A fuse and, instead, bodged-on a 1.25A fuse from a broken TurboGrafx-16.

 

[UsandThem]

Cable modem and Asus RT-AC68U were. Not sure about the roommate’s TV and the PS4 Pro. I’ll have to ask.

We get some gnarly lightening storms here in NC as well, and even though we have everything on UPS systems or surge protectors, I generally power down the computers and unplug them if we get enough of an advanced warning about it coming our way. We've had several lightening strikes in our neighborhood (including one to the electrical transformer that runs behind our property once), but never a direct hit to the house yet.

It looks like I will continue to unplug many of our electronics going forward as well.

 

[balloonshark]

I'm also a firm believer in unplugging everything I can when I here a storm coming. One time I didn't get everything unplugged fast enough and lost my router, vonage device and my motherboard's network chip.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Actually it's funny, I kind of remember going around myself unplugging everything and it's one of those things I kind of stopped doing. Might be a good idea to keep doing it. Switches or even breakers won't quite cut it either so you can't just go turn off the power as lighting is most likely to arc through a closed breaker or switch. So unplugging is still the best way.

 

[VirtualLarry]

On a similar note: I had just replaced the fuse on a Sega CD model 2, which are notorious for having blown fuses

Yeah. I had an older friend that owned a used video-game store, he would get SegaCD units in as trade-ins, and invariably, half of them had blown fuses. I fixed a few of them for him.