About 8 yrs ago at around 6 in the morning, I was listening to the thunder and lighting whilst l dozing in bed, it seamed to be getting further away, then all of a sudden, bang the house jumped into the air all the lights came on, sound and flash were inseparable, adrenalin went straight to max, other half jumped on me
, so we cautiously got out of bed and looked around the house, a few extra cracks around the walls but nothing major, was looking around the hall and noticed the phone line was just a black sooty line up the wall finishing with a black puff ball where it joins the outside cable, jelly crimps were well cooked along with the master socket. The PC was plugged into a surge/lighting arrestor socket extension.
My pc which was only 10 days old
had bitten the dust. Modem was cooked, Tele was alright and the Thompsen freeview box! but vcr died. oh and replace all the light bulbs.
I think it was friday morning because got home and rang BT to report a fault. They came Saturday morning, Engineer was in our street all day repairing cooked phone lines, nearly everyone had lost their Sky dishes (fried LNB's) boxes etc, BT man said that lighting had hit the main transformer to our road and lighting had followed the earth thru to everyones electrics and back up to the connected phone lines.
Having just spend a grand on my pc, I was a bit put out by the insurance companys response, so I told them to ring BT to find out how extensive the damage to our street, so eventually they sent a big check to cover the cost of a new pc.
To this day our phone extention line still remains disconnected due to damage.