My house got hit by lightning

[Donkeypuncher]

Last night there was a crazy storm, and lighting going off all over my neighborhood. I drove home and couldn't see 20 feet in front of me, and almost wrecked hydroplaning while going 25mph. I got home and thought all was safe until I heard 3 lightning strikes really close in 5 minutes. Then all the sudden I see a blinding light and a crack like I've never heard before coming from my back yard. I couldn't find where it hit, but it fried 3 out of the 4 tv's in my house, fried my video card in the pc, killed our fiber optic router, and blew the audio on my cable box. Today verizon came over within 3 hours of calling them, brought a new router and cable converter for out fiber optic cable boxes, and gave me a brand new HD dvr cable box. I went up to walmart and found a nice 27" rca with component jacks for $190. I picked up one for my mom that was $90 but it was just a 20". Everything is good now except I have to send my video card in since it's 2 weeks old and under warranty.

Most of yesterday I spent trying to bail a friend out of jail for dwi which took about 7 hours, then we went to get his car. He didn't remember but he hit a curb and trashed a set of $3k rims and busted the right side suspension on his g35. Insurance is covering everything, but he is lucky they stopped him he could have killed innocent people.

After all that I have to come home to this lightning crap, and my local course is flooded
Maybe this week will turn itself around.

[garublador]

Bummer day, dude.

Have you looked into your homeowner's insurance? It might cover some of the damage from the lightning strike. My parents had a big electrical surge from their neighbor's house settling that blew up some TV's and VCR's and their insurance covered it all. They even got to keep the remotes from the old TV's. Tha'ts good to hear that Verison was so good about replacing that stuff.

I saw lightning strike a yard next to where I was driving once. The most surprising part for me was how freakin' loud it was.

[jamsisjams]

You sound like you're doing alright. You appear to be on top of everything so as long as you can maintain everything will end up alright.

Just keep your head up, man.

[Donkeypuncher]

We talked to our homeowners insurance, but we wanted to wait and see how much the final cost was gonna be. It also fried our sprinkler control box, so the sprinklers start going off in the middle of the rain storm. I think total it's gonna cost us less than $1k to fix all the stuff, because verizon replaced half of it for free. Most everything was on surge protectors but the cable wiring was not, and that is what blew the tv's and my video card because it was connected to the tv via an s-cable. Our deductable is $500 and we get a discount of $300+ a year for never making a claim, so it's just not worth it. It also fried every caller id in the house. I'm thinking the lightning hit the ground where the fiber optic line was buried and travelled through the house that way.