Murray Ridge radio site got a direct hit by lightning Friday afternoon. Zapped all kinds of equipment on all the towers up there. I lost about 4 wireless APs, five switches and 2 UPSs. Big player companies were calling to see if I had any huge lightning protectors or $25K “spare” radios in stock… LOL… as IF!
Mad a freaking mess. There’s about 10 towers up there and as I explained to a kid who worked for me once, it doesn’t matter where you stand, you’re within 10 feet of some tower’s grounded guy wire. If you see storm, you GTF off the tower and RUN to the parking area.
So I’ve spent days explaining how I am still fixing residual problems (the huge surge even blew a port in our Telus router) and explaining how yes, our stuff has surge and lightning protection but if you get directly hit on the head by a lightning bolt you’re welcome to complain to St Peter how you paid for a protection gizmo.
Lightning bolts, horseshoes, hand grenades and atom bombs and all that. Close does count with those.
I personally don’t get to choose where and when the bolt hits, it’s above my pay grade and yours too.
Not that it does any good. I just remembered how about two weeks ago some kid was killed by lightning. The news story said he was bicycling and they went under a tree to get out of the storm.
and went on to mention he was studying to be an electrical engineer…
I wondered if I was the only one to do a face palm when I read that.
