So, last Friday (6 days ago) there was a major storm in our area and our house was hit by lightning. This wasn't really clear at first... we just knew that we and much of our neighborhood lost power about 1am. I remember waking up to this. A few hours later power was restored... but only once I woke up in the morning did the real damage start to become apparent. We didn't realize our house had been hit until that evening when we started to investigate.
To cut a long story short, somehow our rear porch got hit by lighting (probably a metal overhang) and it appears to have arced into a light we have hanging outside. This because a metal hook in that area was literally blown out of the wood it was driven into and a piece of redwood exploded out and left a scorch mark halfway across the back patio. The damage that we've ascertained since....
- dishwasher dead
- television two rear HDMI ports dead (but otherwise working).. my poor poor OLED tv.
- VCR dead
- Playstation dead
- AV receiver partially fried (turns on and display works, but no video or audio output)
- Wii dead
- home theater pc dead (turns on, no post, mechanical hard drive revs up like it's trying to take off into space)
- xbox360 possibly dead (further testing required)
- one sub woofer probably dead (further testing required)
- Nest very dead... initially air conditioning was nonfunctional, but replacing the Nest thermostat fixed it. The one we had was dead enough that it smelled like ozone and the glass front actually cracked (no mean feat).
- Router provided by our ISP dead (would power on, but rear switch was fried to the point that devices connected to it showed no media connection)
- Rack mount switch fried.. would not power on
- Satis's UPS dead... would not start up. PC survived though, so kudos to the UPS
- Shiny's PC dead. No boot. Replacing power supply got power to the motherboard, but no display and questionable boot. Motherboard probably fried. Her UPS, on the other hand, is fine. Big negative to Mr. UPS.. avoid Belkin... go for APC.
So anyway, that's where we're at. I've replaced the AV receiver and the rack mount switch so far with new ones. Our ISP replaced their router and almost all of their own hardware, so we have internet (omg... the internet... I love you so). UPS replacements should be in tomorrow and we're looking for parts to build Shiny a new PC. But omg.. such a pain in the ass and so very expensive. I'm afraid there's more damage we haven't discovered yet.
Life lesson.... don't get hit by lightning.
. Glad you guys are ok. My dad's place is in region that is a gathering place of different air masses and there's regularly lightning there. Sometimes it hits the granite rock and it literally sounds like cannon fire. All the buildings have lightning conduits and triple circuit protection but no direct hit so far.
Pretty ancient, to be honest... and we still have another VCR that was in a different part of the house that still functions.
That sucks. The thing was a monster... we'd had it for like 10 years, printed hundreds of pages.. and it was still rocking the original starter toner.
