Many spike/surge suppressors are one shot deals, self-sacrificing to save connected equipment, and especially cheaper ones usually have no indication if this has already happened. Also they have ratings, and if a strike exceeds the rating, your stuff is toast despite the suppressor. Best practice is to always unplug anything you value. My sister lost a microwave oven, clocks, and all of the "wall warts" that were plugged in for stuff like phones, chargers, etc. Suppressors are still good to have, but are best for those times when a storm happens and you are not at home.
Yup. Lightning can do "amazing" things. We lost computers and network routers due to lightning striking the flagpole at one place I worked. The lightning hit the pole and jumped across to the building, and then took out everything on that side of the building. I spent my days writing up RMAs for routers and 200 pieces of equipment including a server in the test lab.
At another place, during hurricane Ivan, the building was struck and that hit took out 16 brand new digital phones and headsets. That was a pain too because I had to replace them and spend an afternoon writing up RMAs. The users were lucky since they all had laptops, and being C-level management they all happened to be at an off-site meeting.
At home a tree was struck out in a pond near my backyard. The lightning, besides scaring the you-know-what out of us from the close strike, knocked the tree down, and then traveled underground only to come out of the rebar rods in our basement. The damage there was severe and cost us quite a bit of money after the insurance coverage. The blast killed all the computers, a file server, network routers, cable modem, microwave upstairs, stove, and clocks. Why the TV wasn't touched I don't know. The computer equipment, was all connected to UPS units, which protected from the blast directly - there was no smoke... The problem was the severe EMF hit from the lightning which killed the components. The stove, clocks, and microwave took a direct hit and did burn up.
And finally another scary moment...
I was at work when this one occurred. It was a late afternoon and people were getting ready to go home. I was waiting for the parking lot to empty and noticed the sky looked "funny" due to a storm coming in. There was a user or two in the building and one lady was near the window. I sat on the other side of the area in my own cubicle and was burning DVDs in the computer room. Just as I got up to go into the computer room to check my DVD burn, there was an explosion along with a blood curdling scream! Lightning struck the transformer just outside the window on the inside closest to the building so there was no circuit breakers to protect from the hit. The transformer blew up and the surge blew out the electrical meters on the mains. This caused a small fire and we called 911 for the fire. The fire department quickly dispatched the fire, however, National Grid then had to directly connect the building to the mains until the meters could be cut back in.
The damage was odd. The big UPSs in the computer room protected the Avaya phone system and all the file servers, and network equipment. PCs around the building were mostly unscathed except those closest to the hit. These machines powered up, but died shortly later due to what are called latent failures with various components failing such as RAM, CPUs, and in some cases hard disks. Out of these machines, there were two motherboard failures. These are called latent failures which means the components work fine for sometime but eventually fail due to the stress caused by the shock.
Scary is an understatement!
