Pictures of damage from lightning striking the shed at my grandparent's house on June 28th
Posted by Chris in Tampa on 7/7/2010, 3:41 am
Some back story of my trip to TN on June 28th. I just got back to Tampa earlier tonight after spending the week at my grandparents' house.

First though, my history with lightning. Lightning has struck my house or impacted my house at least 5 times I know of. (Which is only counting the amount of times it has done damage, usually computer equipment, with the worst being last August when it killed my new computer, partially damaged another one, and killed the doorbell and radio system throughout my house all on my birthday.) Not counting those instances, it exploded my neighbors chimney a long time ago and once I saw it strike right across the canal from me and set a tree on fire. Not the worse weather damage we have ever seen though. Many years ago the screen enclosure over my pool was completely destroyed by an afternoon thunderstorm. That's Florida!

This time, an hour after my dad and I arrived in TN on June 28th from a 16+ hour drive from Tampa (lightning capital of the US) to TN, lightning struck my grandparents house. It was a long drive highlighted by various interesting events. The only truly weather related event was a tire blow out in 100 degree heat, which when driving for hours and hours on pavement, there is no telling how hot the tires got. That added 3 or 4 hours to the trip trying to find a Firestone dealer since we had a warranty with them. At first we found a Firestone dealer and I said I bet they are closed. And of course they were. When we got there it said they had moved 6 miles north of a certain road. When we got to the road that it said it was 6 miles north of, barricades were blocking the road and it said only local traffic was allowed through and that the road was closed 6 miles ahead. It was that kind of day. We decided not to find out what side of the closure the place was. Then we found one! But then we found out that a Firestone affiliate is not good enough, we had to actually go to a Firestone dealer for them to cover the warranty. Two hours after the blowout we got to a dealer that the affiliate referred us to by driving to the nearest big city and they fixed it. So after a 4AM EDT start in Tampa, and an hour stop at my sister's in Alabama, we got to TN around maybe 9PM EDT. Another event on the drive up involved us not being able to get gas for a bit because the satellite that accepts electronic payments did not work and we had some BP gift cards that we really wanted to use up just in case. (Before the spill, a store had them at a good discount so it was worth buying a couple.)

So I was hot from the all day trip in the hot sun and wanted to take a shower. Here it the stupid thing on my part. I did see lightning when I was driving and when I got to my grandparent's house. But it was well away and didn't seem to be getting any closer. I never did hear it. It was just something way off in the distance. I am not dumb enough, normally, to take a shower when there is lightning around. That normally being because I usually hear it. Well, this was one of those bolts out of the blue. I didn't have the water on yet but was just stepping into the shower when there was a short series of loud bangs. At first I thought someone dropped something but after the subsequent bangs I quickly realized it was lightning. My dad and grandparents were sitting at the kitchen table and saw the flash since they were looking out the window toward the shed.

My grandparents found that the TV was out and later I tried the phone and it was down, although I was able to get online oddly.

It was not until later the next day that my grandfather found the hole in the roof of the shed. My dad went looking for it the morning after but he looked around the house and did not see anything. While we were trying to get phone service working, my grandfather said come here a minute I want to show you something.

The damage:

- A hole in the roof of the shed. Oddly, no burn marks. Just about everyone who saw the damage while we were in TN found that surprising. We are lucky it did not burn down. Not sure how the lightning made it to the house from the shed, or maybe the lightning forked and did hit the house a bit. Nothing runs to the shed from the house. There is no power. But lightning is weird, maybe it could travel enough through the ground to get to the house. There was a hose that was on and had water on it about 4 to five feet from the shed that happened to be connected to the house, but that probably was not it.
- Two garage doors no longer work. One did work immediately after but then it quit too.
- Parts of a satellite dish and various other equipment related to it needed to be replaced. Called the satellite company the evening of the day after when we could briefly get a call out and the very next morning, at 7AM, they came out and fixed everything. Not sure how the satellite dish got damaged, we think maybe from the grounding wire or maybe from the power connection.
- Several phones no longer work or behave very strangely.
- Much of the phone wiring no longer works also. Not sure of the extent of that damage because the phone company said it would take them two weeks to look at the damage. Yep, two weeks. Even the multiple people my grandfather talked to thought that was ridiculous but apparently there was nothing they could do and would try and get someone out sooner if possible. Not there yet!
- Parts of the phone box outside was damaged.
- Blackened part of the power box, but no damage noticed otherwise
- And it might have got a smoke detector that started acting up after this. It sounded like it needed a new battery but that did not help.

Originally, phone service was out. The surge protector, or rather suppressor, in the phone box was destroyed but my grandfather bypassed that and got a phone to work directly from the box. Oddly, DSL which came over the same phone line continued to work. After running temporary wires across the house under various rugs so people would not trip, we got the phone and internet both working. There were a few outlets that still had phone service. (Which happened to be outlets that did not have phones plugged in them.) And eventually the internet no longer worked on the damaged phone wiring so I had to run a line to it across the house.

And another extremely odd thing that happened was that the strike somehow turned on call forwarding and then forwarded all calls to the first speed dial number that my grandparents had programmed with the phone company. (Speed dial at the phone company, not on a phone.) That requires dialing five precise digits and even then I'm not sure it is possible to forward a call like that using the speed dial feature. That forwarded all calls to my grandparents house to a business they do business with. That business, an hour and a half away, fielded like fifteen plus calls from all sorts of relatives and other people trying to get a hold of my grandparents. There were a lot of funny parts involving that, although the business did get a little tired of it, but they understood when we realized what happened and apologized multiple times. They even tried to call my grandparents but the call was routed back to their business! They apparently got a kick out of that. More so when it ended. We discovered that call forwarding needed to be turned off by the night after it happened so they stopped getting the calls and my grandfather called them the next day to make sure it was all working. (We had a relative try and test the phone and they were getting the business. And even earlier, while my dad was trying to dial out he got connected to the business somehow, but we just chalked it up to being odd and he said sorry because he thought maybe he did something.)

At least I was not in the shower at the time. I had a few other close calls that night actually, both about an hour before we got to my grandparent's house, both while driving. I didn't notice a lane was going away, I think because they had the wrong sign because they said slow down to 30mph because of a lane shift but then my lane went away and I had to slam on the breaks so I didn't hit the only other car on that stretch of road which just happened to be next to me. And then also we arrived moments after a truck hit a deer that was killed instantly. It was thrown into the lane I was in so if I had arrived just a little earlier, it would not have been good.

Moral of the story...

Make sure you have surge suppressors on everything. They can still fail, but it is worth it to try. Although since lightning can come in through cable, phone, and power, you have to make sure to protect all three. But even then I call them suppressors or something similar and not protectors because they are trying to help against the little surges. A direct lightning bolt is usually going to get a lot anyway.

And lightning can strike even when you don't hear it. I have good hearing and the first bolt I heard was the big one. Then for the next hour it rumbled, but there was no audible warning for that first one, just the visual one that I should have paid more attention to but it seemed so far away.



It may look blackened, but it is not. That is just the tar.




The phone box while we were bypassing the damaged part.


The electrical box slightly blackened.


And the satellite dish did not have visual damage, but they did have to replace the part that sticks out to the left along with other boxes inside. That wire runs down to around the electrical and phone box are. This is on the front part of the house, while the shed is in the back. The garage doors are below the satellite dish.


And the bad tire which didn't have a chance with all the heat and driving so long. No telling how hot it got.
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Pictures of damage from lightning striking the shed at my grandparent's house on June 28th - Chris in Tampa, 7/7/2010, 3:41 am
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