[Llarry]

Some years back, lightning struck a tree near the house, traveled via the tree roots to a hardware cloth fence, thence to a brick on the outside wall and blew out a section of drywall and started a tiny, smoky fire in the wall. The transformer outside tripped so no power. After the fire dept was done, we had a couple of thousand damage inside the room where the tiny fire was. Once the power company reset the transformer, we were good to go electrically except for a Tivo receiver which had to be repaired. The tree roots almost literally exploded when struck -- there were bit of root and dirt on the roof of the house! Scary stuff!

The cars were garaged on the other side of the house and were not impacted, thank goodness.