wierd surge damage?

Had a wierd situation at a supermarket . Power surge came in killed the FBII XL-4 ver 1 thats been there 12 years and was on a breaker panel with surge protection built into it to protect the comp. registers. took out a cable modem nothing else in store touched and also failed open 2 door switches.

-- Normally switches fuse closed. Never seen switches blown open before. any one else ever see this.

Nick Markowitz Jr. Owner Markowitz Electric Protection Private Industry Fire Investigator. Qualified Electrical- Fire Alarm Contractor

Contributing Editor Pa. Firemans Magazine

Senior Correspondant

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Contract Broadcast Engineer WAVL 910 AM apollo Pa.

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Reply to
Nick Markowitz
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Never ever under estimate the power of mother nature!!!!!!!!! She will always do the "weirdest" things.

Reply to
ABLE_1

Having taken care of an AM radio station for many years now I have seen mother nature do quite a bit of amazing stuff. still figuring this one out.

Reply to
Nick Markowitz

Yep. Had a house once where lightning blew a 4' hole in the roof, took out almost all the electronics in the house. Wierder still is the alarm panel did not get fried but some switches were welded shut, some blown open. The surge followed the ufer in this house and jumped the the neighboring house's ufer about 6 feet away and blew out his breaker box and stopped there.

Reply to
Crash Gordon

There's always a better story ..... Here's one:

You figure once the lightning hits the ground ..... that's it ..... right?

Lightning hits a tree by my clients house.Blows a couple of his cameras and some breakers. Lightning hits the ground, goes through the ground about 20 feet and into a neighbors barn. Comes up out of the ground, kills a horse and shoots out the opposite side of the barn.

That happened 20 years ago and I'm still amazed everytime I think of it.

Another clients house was actually hit by the lightning. Put a small hole in the roof. However, the hit was so hard, that it actually "twisted" the house. It was one of these contemporary houses with the three story great room. The dry wall in the great room and a number of other rooms had to be changed because of fissure like cracks in the walls from ceiling corner to the opposite floor corner. And the house had to shored up and leveled by a house moving company. He wanted me to give him an "evaluation" of what equipment had to be replaced .... for his insurance company. I told him to replace it all, as there was no way to know how long any device would last, once the system was powered up. I told him to get a public adjuster in to represent him to his insurance company too. Of all things, in spite of all the damage and potential damage he could experience in the future, he said he didn't want to "cheat" his insurance company. Noble but stupid ..... I guess. I told him .... sorry but I couldn't guarantee anything would work for any length of time. So the idiot got another alarm company who would. Good riddance!

Reply to
Jim

I had one similar in Australia about 8 years ago. Lightning hit tree outside pub, went to ground, came back up in pub and blew almost everything electronic in the building, including the bands equipment that were playing at the time. Threw one band member clean off the stage. Amazingly, no-one hurt.

Paul Ekins

Linc Secure

Reply to
Paul Ekins

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