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Originally Posted by mrf6969
Interesting. How did those 17 know they had been hit with lightening? Would love to see that article/thread about this. Please share.
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Here is a first hand story from a Villager who gave me permission to post his experience.
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At approximately 6:30 PM on June 10, 2014, our house sustained a direct hit by lightning. The thunderstorm had passed, the skies were clearing, we had left for a meeting when the strike occurred.
While at the meeting, a neighbor three houses down the street called me and said his house was struck by lightening and asked for a reference for an electrician, as several of his circuit breakers had tripped wouldn’t reset.
We finished our meeting and headed home. When we turned onto our street, we noticed many of the neighbors standing in their front yards. When we pulled into our driveway, the garage door didn’t work. Uh oh.
Turns out it wasn’t our neighbors house that was hit… it was ours. And the strike blew out circuit breakers up and down our side of the street.
When we entered our home and investigated, we discovered our telephone point of interface had been blown off the outside wall (damaging the neighbor’s vinyl siding), so the telephones were dead, and many lights were out.
On further investigation we discovered our SECO whole house surge protector was totally destroyed, the Eaton whole-house surge protector was tripped, and most of the circuit breakers were tripped. Several of the circuit breakers couldn’t be reset. I checked in the attic, and there was no evidence of fire or structural damage.
SECO arrive that evening and replaced the SECO whole house surge protector and our electrician replaced the bad circuit breakers and checked the house wiring. We also three satellite receivers and a modem destroyed, all of which were connected to the unprotected telephone lines, a washing machine circuit card, and the garage door button.
The following day the lightening protection system technician came and inspected our lightening protection system. The system was unharmed, except for the top air terminal which had 1/4 to 1/2 inch burned off the top. The technician replaced that air terminal, which I subsequently gave to Len Hathaway.
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Other stories are where a Villager was sitting on his lanai during a storm and saw the lightning strike the air terminal on his lanai. In another case, the homeowner heard the "bang" and upon inspecting his home he saw one of the LPS cables scortched a bush.