My house took a near hit many years ago. I remember seeing the entire street light up and hearing the boom.. Not really sure where the bolt landed, but it caused much damage, and my system wasn't even on. The input section of my tuner was blown to bits, literally, according to my technician. Possibly the bolt hit my antenna and came in, even though the mast was connected to an 8 foot copper ground rod. The antenna (yagi) was connected to a 300 to 75 ohm balun transformer to a grounding block onto my tuner. I never checked the condition of the balun or antenna, I was told to replace them both as they were probably fried.
The worst damage was to my power amp, an Apt A-1. It was plugged into the switched outlet of my Hapi 2 preamp, which was off. Two days after the strike, I switched on my system and was treated to some real fireworks. It looked like a sparkler was burning inside the Apt. I quickly unhooked it and ran it outside because it looked like it might set my house on fire. The technician who repaired it said every component except for the signal lights were ruined.
So how did this happen? It was theorized that the rapid and very powerful electric field induced a high current in the power transformer, which then cascaded throughout the rest of the amp. I'll never really know.
What I do know however, is that lightning does whatever it wants and that I was very thankful to have "replacement value" on my homeowners insurance. That's how I got my Aragon 2004. I believe most power conditioners come with equipment protection policies, but I don't know if they cover lightning.
In addition to the tuner and amp, my telephones were reprogrammed and my TVs were all magnetized to one color. The preamp was the only component in my house to come through unscathed.
