T’was a dark and stormy night….  Lightning doesn’t strike twice…

The first was true. The second was improbable. But it did happen.

Six weeks ago The Shed was hit by lightning. An almighty crash, flash of light and the Residual Current Detector (RCD) kicked in and the power went off, plunging in the place into darkness save the light from the screen of the Acer Ferrari laptop.

The damage was limited to a modem, VoIP phone and a router thankfully.

Last night was very wild and woolly here in the south west of WA. A couple of houses in the town of Waroona 90 mins north lost roofs apparently. At The Shed it was around 8pm, bucketing down with rain and blowing a gale. There was a faint rumble of thunder in the distance, a big pot of my special pea and ham soup was on the gas stove bubbling away cheerily and I was stirring it when I literally thought the walls were about to cave in.

An enormous explosion literally blew me off my feet, the power flicked off and there was a strong stink of ozone and smoke in the air. Similar to last time, the only light was from the open laptop, now running on battery, and in the gloom I could see Budweiser the dog had retreated as far under the desk as he could.

It took me a few seconds to realise what had happened and to get the presence of mind the switch the RCD to see if there was still power. Thankfully there was and all seemed OK. Although the gas stove had gone out and I could smell gas in the room.

Turning around to turn the gas off, I noticed there had been some damage. Half a metre from where I had been standing were the phone and power points for the iiNet BOB Lite modem I used. Note the past tense. The ADSL isolator box was in pieces, the cover for the phone point has gone never to be seen again, the modem was two feet away face down, all cables severed or burnt and astonishingly, the power pug for the modem blown clean out of the wall socket with the plug itself in pieces and bits of circuit board melted and on the bench next to it.

Looking back over the incident, I actually think I was in a bit of shock for an hour or so. I remember my ears were ringing and I had a blinding headache you could photograph, and I rang my younger brother (whose shed it is) to let him know, but I think I rambled a bit. He has since confirmed I rambled a lot!

Dollar wise, not a great deal has been lost, although I am stuck with using wireless (at $50 / 3GB!) until a nice Telstra man gets the Cobb and Co coach here – although to be fair, Telstra has escalated the problem to ‘emergency’ due to the nature of the incident, and I am instructed not to touch the phone point as it could still be live.

If the situation had been worse – I don’t know how that could be as I know sod all about electricities – but I assume it could have been, the damage to the amount of gadgets I have here, both my own and review stuff, could have been enormous. Not to mention bloody dangerous.

So the golden rule would be to have a decent UPS and surge protector on hand. And not just a cheap powerboard with a cut out switch on it.

By David Hague

David is the owner and publisher of AusCam Online. He has a background in media dating back to 1979 when he first got involved with photojournalism in motorsport, and went from there into technology via a 5 year stint with Tandy Computers. Following that, he ran a software distribution company on the Gold Coast and was one of the first to recognise the potential of Microsoft Windows.

Moving back to WA, David wrote scripts for Computer Television for video training for the just released Windows and Office 95 among others, and was then lured to Sydney to create web sites for the newly commercial Internet in 1995, building hundreds of sites under contract to OzEmail including Coates Hire, Hertz Queensland, John Williamson, the NSW Board of Studies and many, many more.

He went back into full time journalism as the Managing Editor for Channel 7's 'Gadget Guy', Peter Blasina's publications VideoCamera and Pixelmag, before starting Australasian Camcorder magazine when these publications were shelved. He lives at Sydney's Avalon Beaches nearly on the ocean front with dog Budweiser and in his spare time is a nut for motor sport, road safety, fishing, science fiction - especially Dr Who - and technology.

David can be contacted via david@auscamonline.com