[plug] lightning, Re: modem

[Daniel Foote]

> Several years ago, I had ONE appliance in a house (a VCR) that had it's
> main board fried by nearby lightning.  It only had a power connection,
> no aerial.  All other devices in the house were untouched, including the
> TV sharing a power board with that VCR.
>
> Similarly, I recently had ONE telephone device fried out of all the PCs
> and fax/answering machines and cordless phones that have a connection to
> the two phone lines coming to my house.  It was in parallel with other
> devices but got picked out for special attention.

I had a similar experience during a daytime storm a few years ago. I
normally turn off and unplug computers during a storm, but this
particular time I was thinking "oh, no, I've never had problems
before."

Sure enough, I had three computer running when the whole house lit up
from a flash that can't have been more than 100m away. The power goes
out instantly - a massive "bang" occurs instantly... and then I get
worried... wondering what will turn back on when the power comes back
on.

The power was off for over an hour. When I went through to power
things up again, I found that the VCR was dead, as well as a modem and
network card in one of the PCs that was on. Everything else was
unaffected.

Still, that more-than-an-hour wait for the power to come back was
excruciating. I had expected to lose a lot more than that from a
strike that close.

Daniel Foote.