or do the smoke detectors go off?
Obviously you were not there. A fire is 1 of the hardest things to fight because there are so many variables!The winds being the worst!
Hey, lightning is lightning, and grounding doesn't always work and is not perfect. Get a new insurance company
A regular ground rod (s) on a typical electrical service installation will provide a short path to ground of 25 ohms resistance or less. This is fine when dealing with normal electrical surges, but when dealing with lightning strikes, all bets are off. I'm surprised your insurance carrier would even go so far as to imply a normal working grounding system (such as the one I described above) would provide a path for a lightning strike without incurring any equipment damage. When lightning strikes, you may have a total melt down of the service cables, bus bar of your electrical panel, breakers and even damage to equipment on circuits that are protected by surge protectors. Even surge protectors are sold with joule rating (watts/second) and will not hold up very often with a direct lightning strike. Does your electrical equipment specify the use of surge protectors? When your phone cable lines were installed, they needed to be grounded (properly) to your grounding system. Best bet, hire an electrician to come over and see why you had the damage. If they say it wasn't your fault, get it in writing and send it to the insurance carrier. Good luck.
