[Some negative views, and some questions...] How about cable lines?
These are underground, so I assume it's unlikely that a lightning strike could hit these [unless they hit it at the entry to my house], but it seems that if lightning hit my neighbours powerlines, it could easily enter the cable line and zip straight into my house, blowing every networked computer and the tv's. When I leave the house for a holiday, I pull all power out and cable lines, however, for a lot of the lightning storms that seem to happen around here, I would still be unplugging and unscrewing when the storm passed. While there's probably mathematics for storms happening more often at night, we're all at work for 10 hours of the day, and asleep for another 6 hours minimum. This means that if a storm happens in 16/24's of the day [aka 2/3rds] then we'll not be able to disconnect everything. So unless you're a religious watcher of the weather channel [my wife is, so other people might be too I guess] then pulling the cables out is really only an exercise with Sods [Murphys] Law. ie) if you don't, then you'll get hit. Additionally, how about telephone lines? I used to pull out modem lines when killing machines for storms, but now am on cable. Is there a risk of fire if telephones are not pulled out? Equally, is there a risk of fire anyway? If lightning hits my wiring, won't the house probably burn down? Lastly, does anyone know what the state of home insurance is with regards to lightning? Is it considered an act of God? Hen On Fri, 29 Aug 2003, Allan Atherton wrote: > Anne Cartwright <cartwrig at aye.net> wrote: > > My whole set up is hooked to a surge protector which in turn is plugged > > into a UPS/surge protector, however as I understand it, if lightnig > > hits close enough it will fry them too. A surge protector cannot > > protect against a strong hit by lightening. | The next meeting of the Louisville Computer Society will | be September 23. The LCS Web page is <http://www.kymac.org>. | This list's page is <http://erdos.math.louisville.edu/macgroup>.
