OT - storm damage

[Doug Miller]

's my parents' house....

Nobody home - nobody hurt. But the cleanup and repair will take a while... Please keep my parents, Jim and Ann, in your prayers. Thanks all.

[Leon]

I wish your parents well but take heart in the fact that it was a single incident. Repairs to their home can begin "almost" immediately. Living in the hurricane zone, damage to a home in a largely populated area guarantees damage to tens of thousands of homes. Repairs can take an absurdly long time because of the shortage of materials and workers to do repairs. In Houston we had a hurricane in early September last year. There are still homes in my neighborhood that have blue tarps covering the roofs.

Good Luck with the insurance company!

[Lee Michaels]

Mom was in church when it happened. She was out of the way. I wonder what the odds are of your house getting struck by lightening? I really don't know what to say. I hope the house has a speedy recovery. And that your parents are doing well.

[sweet sawdust]

Glad nobody was hurt and damage was relatively minor. I bet lightning rods are a strong consideration right now.

[Lew Hodgett]

Given a choice of natural disasters, fire, flood, wind, earthquake, lightning, etc, lightning probably creates the easiest cleanup and repair.

Glad no one was hurt.

Lew

[Nova]

It's good to hear no one was injured. I hope the repairs are easy.

P.S. It's a good thing they didn't have a ungrounded dust collector in their basement. ;-)

[Doug Miller]

LOL -- the resultant explosion might have levelled the neighborhood!!

[Dave]

Glad everyone is OK! You are helpless because you can't tell when or where they will hit. I know the area well. My first home, out of the service, was at 61st and Indianola. After about 8 years we moved to the 100 block of East Westfield Blvd. (ex still lives there) The only things that REALLY freaked me out were the tornado warnings! Almost all were at night and you couldn't see anything! (BIG trees around the house) Indiana IS in tornado alley! Now I live in Seattle, by way of Florida, so I only have to worry about earthquakes! (lived thru hurricane Andrew in Florida) Again, glad they're OK. Homes are replaceable, parents aren't.

Dave

[Han]

[e-mail] (Doug Miller) wrote in news:YulCl.3685$ [e-mail]:

Glad the humans are fine. The hose can berepaired. I do hope it won't take too long. I don't pray much but good vibes are being sent to you and your parents!

[Lew Hodgett]

At one time in my life I sold outdoor area and roadway lighting equipment.

Poles that are supplied in and around Indianapolis area are designed to survive 100MPH wind gusts.

It's been a long time, but as I remember, it was confined to a rather small area.

Lew

[Doug Miller]

Oh, sure, I know where that is. Close by, indeed.

Even closer. Wow. Small world.

Exactly so. We live only 10 minutes or so away, off Kessler, so Mom and Dad spent last night with us, a trifle peeved because the insurance adjuster hadn't returned any phone calls... but that's all squared away now. The insurance company is putting them up in a hotel for the next 3 nights or so, until the adjuster can make arrangements for a condo for the next month. They've already hired a restoration company, and work is expected to be completed in early May.

[Doug Miller]

And well they need to be, too, Lew. It's not uncommon for thunderstorms here to have *sustained* winds in excess of 65-70mph with gusts over 80. According to the National Weather Service website, the highest wind speed ever recorded here was a gust of 111 mph on 29 June 1929. Not exactly hurricane winds... but not exactly a gentle breeze, either. That'll do some serious damage.

[Doug Miller]

My thanks to you and to everyone for all your good wishes, prayers, etc. The outpouring of help from Mom and Dad's neighbors and from their church has been phenomenal.

[Mark & Juanita]

Wow. Glad no one was hurt. Had a lightning strike a number of years ago -- hit the DirecTV dish and took out the TV, VCR, travelled through the phone line and took out the modem and printer but left the TV intact. Looked like a majority of the energy went through the grounding wire from the mast. I was awake at the time (~2AM), brilliant blueish flash followed by an immediate boom. We went through the house making sure nothing was on fire and that there was no smoke -- there wasn't so we went back to bed. Our son discovered the damage in the morning when the TV wouldn't come on.

Had a boss in Texas had a lightning strike that burned down his home. Fortunately, they weren't home at the time. Strike appeared to hit the chimney and blew out bricks in the fireplace right at where they would have been sitting for breakfast if they had been home. The fire started in the attic.

[Mark & Juanita]

umm, that should have read, "left the PC intact"

[B A R R Y]

It's good to hear nobody was hurt!

I'll keep them in my thoughts.

[featherlightshavings]

In Indy the odds are probably pretty small. My brother used to live in a very flat area NW of Indy (think yard surrounded by corn fields). They used to get a strike every other year. One year the strike came down a tree across 15' of yard and blew a hole in the cement block foundation --- all he could say was that it was "loud and surprising". From the aftermath, it's amazing just how far bits of electronics will fly when they get real hot real fast. After the first time he had learned to keep the receipts on file for those fancy power strips with guaranteed built-in surge protectors.

hex

-30-

[phorbin]

Surge protectors are not lightning arrestors.

I'm surprised that he got away with just having to replace the surge protectors.

[featherlightshavings]

There was damage far beyond the surge protectors. But there was a spendy brand he had for a while (purchased after the first strike!) with a "we'll replace your fried equipment guarantee" which covered some of his losses downstream of the protectors. Getting money out of them was, of course, a slow and painful process -- very few people ever tried to make a claim so the claims process was not well-oiled (that may have been by design), then most claiminats don't have the sales slips as documentation, most of the remaining don't have slips slips for the damaged equipment.

The worst time they lost multiple power supplies and control units (computers , microwave, range, furnace, game console). Other times it was more modest and generally limited to things hooked to a phone line.

hex

-30-

[westom]

Having direct lightning strikes without damage is routine if the protection is properly installed. This was discussed in rec.crafts.woodturning entitled "options on nova dvr xp" on 21 Mar

2009 at: Solution is rather simple. If a surge is given a path to earth before entering the building, then no surge damage. If not, then the surge will find paths destructively to earth through appliances.

Also routine is to have direct lightning strikes without protector damage. Having a protector damaged (grossly undersized) gets the naive to promote more sales. Where surge protection means no damage (ie every telco CO), even the protector must remain functional after direct lightning strikes. An effective solution that also means spending less money.

A protector that fails means it provided no protection. Even becomes a severe fire threat. Routine is to have direct lightning strikes and the protector even remains undamaged. But that means energy must be dissipated harmlessly in earth; not is some magic box.

Will a protector stop and absorb what even three miles of sky could not? Power strip must because it is not connected short to earth. Obviously, the only protector that can make surges irrelevant is a protector connected short (ie 'less than 10 feet') to earth. Done that way everywhere that damage is not acceptable.