I just got back from the dacha.
Yesterday we had a terrifying thunderstorm in Daugavpils with all the obligatory attributes of a terrifying thunderstorm: lightning, thunder, downpour, and equipment damage. The downpour was such that a whole puddle formed on the carpet in my room (the balcony door was not closed). An hour later, I discovered that in the other room there is also a huge puddle on the laminate, albeit 4 meters away from the balcony door. If this keeps up, I will have to abandon my atheism and become a worshiper of Tibetan six-meter-tall cave monsters.
However, you can't scare us with water. Because you can expect something worse from a thunderstorm. I should mention that my system administrator and provider is well-versed in power engineering (Honestly, I looked for a more suitable word, but couldn't find anything better). And therefore, he not only advises all clients to unplug their electrical equipment from the socket during a thunderstorm, but he does it himself too. That's the preamble. And the facts themselves are as follows.
The provider had a left-on network switch (in Albanian, a switch) burn out, that is, a device connecting different computers in a local network. Fortunately, he disconnected the clients from the switch. Why fortunately?
Because at the very same time at my dacha the following happened.
Lightning struck a pole located 60 meters from a local network of 5 computers. This caused a power surge in the mains and simultaneously induced currents in the twisted pair (telephone wires and local network wires).
As a result of the rampage of the elements, in the first house (without computers) a telephone literally exploded. In the next one, the computer was turned off, but not unplugged from the socket, as a result of which the poor comp burned out completely. In the next house lived craftier comrades, and therefore all the computers were unplugged from the socket. But, apparently, not crafty enough, because they didn't think to disconnect from the local computer network. That's why the switch burned out, 2 network cards, into which the local network wire was plugged (I remind you that the comps were unplugged from the socket at the time) and an ADSL modem connected to the telephone line.
In the next house nothing burned out solely because it's my dacha and there's nothing there. In the penultimate and last houses, not only the computers themselves, but also the monitors died completely.
And a guy who lives a whole 150 meters away from the lightning strike had his network card burn out and his audio is glitching.
Such are the results.
Now the poor comrades are thinking what to lie tell the warranty service and the provider (2 out of 3 burned out comps were under warranty).
It remains to be added that not a single house had grounding in the sockets, although the electricians recently changed the equipment and it was on the electrical panel. Draw your own conclusions.
P.S. They say lightning struck the central TV tower twice. The loss figures there will be even more cheerful.