Easy Come Easy Go…….BOOM!

Was there a whole house surge protector installed ??? 🤣

I’m joking! I’m joking.

Damn that looks terrible!  What an exceptionally violent lightning strike, glad everyone is OK!

While a surge protector would do nothing for this home, 99% of damaging electrical surges are not this bad.  Good all around surge protection for home devices still makes sense.

A good friend of mine had his house struck by lightning 3 years ago.  The lightning only caused a fire on the roof and in the attic.  The amount of water the fire department poured on the house ruined everything.  They had to strip the entire house down to the studs.  The house and contends were a total write off.  Took 15 months before they were able to move back in.  Read and understand your entire home policy.  IMHO

Wow what a disaster. Sorry for your loss. When we built our house on a hillside 7 years ago I had a whole house surge protector installed .

Sorry for your ordeal. 63,000 amps as a peak current is not that much. I have two Siemens protectors in parallel mounted in panel - each rated 60,000 amps peak. The question is how they rated your surge, peak or average and if average then over what time (big difference in energy)?
When you get direct hit there is no ground wire capable of carrying to ground one foot wide plasma (likely your case), for smaller indirect hits protection is a must. I have every outlet connected to electronics protected twice - with in-panel Siemens large surge absorbers and local near outlet smaller absorbers.
The good news is that statistically this crap  won’t happen to you again in your lifetime. Think positive.

People talking about surge protectors need to understand the differenct between a direct hit that explodes the roof and a surge coming in on the power line when a power pole is hit a mile away.

Jerry