Clearly, we need to ensure that lighting carries the appropriate regulatory warnings! A couple of paragraphs of the usual rambling UL/CSA warnings and cautions should do the trick. :)
Bob Wilson TIR Systems Ltd. Vancouver. -----Original Message----- From: geor...@lexmark.com [mailto:geor...@lexmark.com] Sent: April 2, 2002 10:35 AM To: emc-p...@ieee.org Subject: Danger and Power of Lightning A year or so ago, I met a retired IBMer and his wife whose teen-age son was stuck and killed some years ago by lightning in the outfield of a baseball game that had just begun. Other than some distant clouds, there was no warning that this might happen, no rain or thunder. Now, I have just learned of the severe lightning damage done to the home of a guy I managed in the '80s. I have pasted his account below, with comments in brackets [ ] of additional damage findings. It is evidence of the sheer power in a lightning bolt, and the strange paths it chooses to follow in attempting to establish the "best" path between the sky and "good" earth ground. ===================================== Friday [March 29] around 3:15pm my house was hit by lightning. Right now we're in a motel up the road because we don't have any electricity (light, heat or phones). The utility company pulled the meter to inspect and won't reinstall until house wiring is inspected. Due to the Easter weekend we couldn't get anyone out before Monday. The bolt hit in yard blowing two bushes completely out of ground then jumped into the rear wheel of my Corvette melting spots on both rear mag wheels as it went through and melting the car cover near wheels. It blew several huge holes in cement driveway and then hit my garage where it blew out outlets and switches, blew drywall and insulation completely across garage, blew out garage window, structurally damaged garage door & brick pillar that supports it and tore gutters and a section of garage roof at corner off house. The new heat pump is fried along with phone lines, cable lines. There's also a hole in living room ceiling and several other holes in roof. Pieces of my driveway rained down on the house, two large chunks came through roof and living room ceiling while the other chunk came down above our bedroom, hit a rafter and stayed in attic. My garage was full of smoke but no fires, just insulation and wood that was seared. The Fire dept. used an infrared camera to make sure nothing was continuing to burn in wall and they covered holes in roof. We've found large chunks of driveway completely imbedded in neighbors yard 150' from hole in driveway. My neighbor was out working in his backyard about 250' away and said the bolt hit just when he dug into ground with a shovel, sparks flew from shovel and he has bruises on his arms from jolt and was hit by small pieces of flying cement from my driveway. At first he wondered what he had hit with his shovel. Several people on street lost computers, phone lines and cable. The technician said it took out a whole section of county , 1000 customers and my house was ground zero. [Later evidence seems to indicate a complicated path for the lightning to reach a good earth ground, probably the buried water or sewer pipes in the street. It seems to have hit metal gutter above garage, traveled several feet before "jumping" to house vertical wiring near the garage door, downward to the metal angle iron along bottom of door, then "lept" to steel re-bar in the concrete driveway, to the end ot the re-bar and then to a wheel on the car parked there, thru the car body and back to more re-bar in the concrete, then under the shrubs, possibly heading for the buried street utlities. Two craters in the driveway indicate where it entered and exited the encased re-bar.] ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@attbi.com For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on "browse" and then "emc-pstc mailing list" ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: majord...@ieee.org with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: emc-p...@hypercom.com Dave Heald: davehe...@attbi.com For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org Jim Bacher: j.bac...@ieee.org All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on "browse" and then "emc-pstc mailing list"
