Lightning strike-------Yikes------------------

A few years ago, I was working at a "dish". That is a large plot of land where radio stations, cell providers, 911 carriers & such rent plots to put their equipment on. I was doing isothermic (cadwelding) on a cell tower radio platform. The owner of the property came by on his golf cart & told me a big storm was just over the horizon. I kept working as the storm got closer & he told me I needed to get away from the platform quickly. I hopped on his cart & we hustled to a building about 50 yards away. Just as we got in the building & turned around, a huge bolt of lightening hit the tower. There was crushed limestone under the platform & the lightening strike scattered the limestone for 40' or better around the outside of the platform. Needless to say, I had to change underwear after that. Now, if I see a thunderstorm coming my way I stop everything & make my way inside quickly. On another note, Greater Harris County 911 was on a tower north of Houston, TX & had experienced outages due to lightening strikes. An electrical engineer decided to experiment with excess grounding on the tower. He had 3 10' auger grounds built with 40' of .500 MCM (1/2") braided copper wire welded to them. He had them screwed into the ground 15' & isothermic welded on each of the tower legs. A few weeks after this, the tower took a severe lightening strike & there was just a momentary blip on the 911 service, instead of taking it down as usually happened. Most all of the communication in & around the state of Texas have adopted this type of grounding.