Lightning

Last night the Richmond area was overrun by thunderstorms. Usually this isn’t such a big deal, except that last night my house took a strike and blew up a bunch of stuff. As best as I can tell, the strike came in through the cable line.

Once the lightening bolt hit, the smoke alarm upstairs went off. After I managed to get it to shut up, I went down stairs to check all of my gear. I smelled electrical smoke in the downstairs hall. Clearly it was coming from the cat closet where the stereo, and cable box for the plasma tv are stored. I opened the door, and the smell was super concentrated. I turned on the stereo to see if it had been hit, and it sparked and smoked right in front of my eyes. No big deal… I wanted a new stereo anyway.

Then I went into my office and nothing would come on… no lights, nothing. So I checked the breaker panel and sure enough, the breaker had been tripped. Once I reset the breaker, I checked everything in my office and started to realize it was going to be an ugly situation.

It took me awhile, but I finally noticed this:

Cable as Fuse

That’s a picture of the corner just behind my desk in my office where the brunt of the strike did it’s damage. My guess is that it hit the cable line in the backyard and then turned this particular piece of coax into a fuse. You can see the discoloration on the extension cord from the heat. Also notice how the paper was blown off the wall. All the electronics gear plugged in to the extension cord has scorch marks on the prongs of the plugs and no longer works. Of all the places that piece of cable could have come apart, that was the only place I would have possibly seen it.

So far, the casualty count is this:

  1. All Three Cable Boxes
  2. Bedroom TV
  3. Office TV
  4. Office DVD Player
  5. External DVD drive
  6. USB/Ipod Hub
  7. Desktop Computer
  8. The Living Room Stereo System

Luckily, neither my ReadyNAS nor the the plasma TV got hit.

I called the insurance company last night, and an adjuster is supposed to be calling me today to figure out what the next steps are. I also have the cable company coming out tomorrow to see what the story is there.

All told, I guess I was lucky.

3 Responses to “Lightning”

  1. Comments are still slightly borked for the time being. I can now get all the comment text, but any paragraph formatting is lost. Please comment as normal, and I'll keep working to get things straightened out.
  1. That is so amazing. I guess you're lucky it didn't cause a fire! I've never heard of lightening causing smoke, etc. You're right -- it could have been so much worse!
  2. [...] be getting a check for about $800 from my insurance company for the damage I incurred from the lightning storm at the end of [...]
  3. exciting stuff...glad to hear you're alright!

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