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

Wednesday night we took a lightning strike to one of my wife's flower pots with me 5' away. I felt like I got hit with a flash-bang. (I never have) Pressure wave deafened me on the right ear. Power flickered and went out, I went to bed. Next morning I have only partial power in my house, check the panel and every GFCI breaker in my panel was tripped. I had no internet and my subwoofer was making continuous popping noise-had to unplug it. I restarted everything, no internet. Went to Staples and bought a mid/upper new router. Stopped by my ISP and asked for service in the morning if my new router didn't fix it. They called the fiber people and they said I had no power to the gateway. I didn't install the new router as I still didn't have fiber. In the morning at 8:30 3 service guys from my ISP show up and verify the fiber gateway is dead. They will call the fiber people who have to come replace the gateway. About noon the fiber guy shows and changes the gateway with no small amount of skepticism. Oua-La I have internet again. I leave the system alone for the day and changed the router this morning. The router which has an iPhone app to set it up. (I downloaded the app at Staples where I had internet) This morning was the big router upgrade, setup and giving four mobile devices the new log-on and password. Took a little over an hour and had a few blind rabbit holes. I talk to my Media people about the subwoofer and they assure me the $500 motherboard is gone but they can provide a new one for $800. They are coming anyway the middle of July to install upgraded media devices anyway so she assured me I would get the project pricing on the subwoofer as well.
Then I changed the fuel pump on my Barracuda so I could drive it------------------
and so it goes---------------------------

Wow, lucky lucky! Had a buddy almost got zapped, hit the ground about 10 feet from him, with no damage to himself.
Glad you are ok.

That sucks. Homeowners insurance should cover the damage though. Keep all the receipts and make a claim.

Mother Nature is nothing to fool with.
My neighbors teen age kid got hit by lighting while fishing.
It was iffy if he was going to make it for a week or so, but he pulled thru and is fine.
He said the worst of it was, it blew his toe-nails off. It hurt him for quite a while until they grew back.

When i was a young tacker long time ago i was standing on the porch of the house with my mother my younger brother was standing in a puddle on the ground level when a lightning bolt hit him on top of the head then ricocheted into the meter box beside us turning into a heap of molten metal my brother didn't have a mark on him although i must say he is a little different LOL
Also my sister who lives in Darwin has been hit 6 times destroying her electrics everytime last time it took out $30,000 in solar equipment the insurance company wont insure her anymore as she lived on an iron ore belt

I heard on news a couple weeks ago that a guy in Birmingham was riding motorcycle and got struck and killed. It shattered his helmet

red67gts said:

I heard on news a couple weeks ago that a guy in Birmingham was riding motorcycle and got struck and killed. It shattered his helmet

Click to expand...

Back when I was kid , we had an 8 month old heifer that touched a barb wire fence w/ her nose, about the time lightening hit the fence about a 1/4 mile away, killed her deader than hell . Her nose and tongue were burned ---------------

When we lived in AZ we had real "dirty" power. Had some pretty bad voltage swings as well. I was into home audio equipment at the time, bought a line conditioner. Not only does it clean up the power but will prevent your audio equipment from getting nuked in the event of a lightning strike.

My &watwaffle of a sister....her old place got hit hit by a strike. Cooked every electronic device in the house. Nick, her boyfriend, lost over 40k in electronics. The house had copper plumbing...blew every pipe open. Her well, prior to the strike, was not provided much water. She was the highest property around with the shallowest well (her house was the first in the 'hood)...after the strike the well went out....fried the wires all the way down. She had a 3 piece sliding door going out to the deck...it was stuck shut. She was doing the dishes when it hit. The strike actually hit her neighbors house first......her dog was never the same afterwards. Scary stuff

The fiber gateway and my subwoofer were not surge protected. All the rest of my electronics were protected by a high end surge suppressor supplied by my media people and saved most of my stuff.
My hearing is still not back to it's previously partially deaf levels but the hearing aids are helping. I was wearing them when the concussion wave hit, I thought it drove it right into my brain and according
to those in the know there is know way of knowing if the lightening strike made me any weirder than I was due to the high baseline to start with.
I can't help but feel that there must be a plan for me as first the boat tips over and now this-----------------------you know-------------------

My brother’s first house was on the highest part of an open former farm field. The builder didn’t put in a lightning protection system and their chimney got hit during their second year (it blew the top portion completely off). He asked me to design/install a LPS for them and I did. As I was reviewing the costs with them, the wife asked how it worked. After I said that it created a strong ground path to conduct the lightning safely away, she was appalled that it meant that lightning would still strike their house. Then I told her that not only would lightning still strike, it would likely strike them more frequently, but that no damage would be inflicted. She nixed that plan right then and there. Did she think there was some magic spell to keep lightning away??! Their neighbor’s house burned to the ground two years later after another lightning strike. She just buried her head in the sand and prayed. My brother said that he wouldn’t try to change her mind. Another example of how someone with a college degree didn’t know very much about the physical world.

I prayed too.
For two giant angels to stand over my house every night, and keep evil spirits from entering my dreams.
Since that prayer I haven't been bothered any more.

No pics of the pot?

And your first mistake was screwing around with all your electronics when you should have been buying lottery tickets!

Wow, ur a lucky man. Glad ur ok. Did ur hearing come back? Kim

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.

We had a cow hit and killed by lightning. Blew off her hooves, eyelids, lips and the tips of her tongue, tail, ears and tits. Fist sized burn spot on her back where the strike probably was. She looked like a prop from a bad horror movie.

We found her the day after it happened. When I think about it, I can still smell it - like ozone mixed with burnt hair and feathers.

red67gts said:

I heard on news a couple weeks ago that a guy in Birmingham was riding motorcycle and got struck and killed. It shattered his helmet

Click to expand...

Church member lost his son motorbiking on a dry lake bed in the high desert. Killed him instantly.

So 3 ISP guys came out and then had to get another guy to replace the ONT? All our fiber guys are installation and repair so they stock all that stuff on their trucks and they go solo. Should have been back up on the first visit. Glad your safe and got your stuff back online.

Who says flip phones can't take good photos. LOL