What’s the best way to prevent lightning strikes from causing a fire?
A house on my street burned down yesterday from a lightning strike. That’s the second house to go up in flames in the last 2 years. I don’t know if it was ever determined what caused the first house to burn down but it certainly could have been lightning.
I can’t even imagine what they are going through.
When our house was struck by lightning, there was no resulting fire – I credit our standing seam metal roof. Near as the adjuster and I could figure, the strike rolled across the roof and took out part of the concrete balcony’s wooden railing, a strip off the adjacent huge live oak, and every electronic device in our home (along with the antenna that was fastened further along the railing, next to the chimney), and triggered GFCIs in both our home and barn.
The blown devices were each installed on separate surge protection strips, but it didn’t matter. After this experience, my husband (who wasn’t present for the strike) wanted to install lightning rods on our house. The inspecting electrician told us not to bother.
Also, when I asked him why the surge protectors didn’t protect, he laughed and said that he gets asked that all the time. He said nothing can protect against a direct lightning strike, that surge protectors are meant for something like a momentary power outage (we’re on a co-op, it happens) or a rolling brownout/blackout.
I was the one at home late at night, with our puppy, and in the middle of texting my husband (at work) about how this was the worst lightning storm I’d ever seen or heard when there was a sound like a hundred thousand crystal glasses being shattered. Never heard anything like it, wasn’t a boom or a loud crack, but the sound of a tremendous amount of glass being broken.
I grabbed the puppy, raced downstairs, made plans to try to get to my truck if I smelt smoke, and parked the two of us in the downstairs powder room (safest place in the house). Ventured out in a couple of minutes to cautiously go upstairs to look and smell for smoke.
A neighbor’s almost brand new home was hit by lightning years ago, and was engulfed within 5 to 6 minutes – a total loss.
I don’t know that there’s anything one can do to prevent this. The electrician said we can’t fight Mother Nature.
lightening rods on structures are part of the solution, also need to add surge protection to incoming power and any cable, also need to provide grounding to any incoming metal service pipe (water or gas lines)
https://www.weather.gov/safety/lightning-rods
Our barns are metal framed, these are specifically grounded with ground rods/cables.
Just last month we had a direct hit of a lightening bolt that did not hit any of the buildings but did hit the metal Tee post that is the corner post of our electric fence that is less than ten feet from two of the barns. Nothing was lost, not even the fence charger as everything was grounded and surge protected
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