Fun with lightning

Posting to one of the many mailing lists upon which I lurk, Roger Henry tells a few lightning-related tales:

Never actually been adjacent to something that was explosively damaged. When I worked for the national Telco a lot of the network was still magneto (wind up and wait) and much of the copper was overhead. Equipment was often destroyed by lightning. One I attended had destroyed the telephone. Chunks of it had spread through the kitchen like shrapnel. The magneto, the heaviest part, had punctured a fibro-cement wall. All that was left of the cabling was an inch of charred cable under each staple. The two batteries had exploded and spread their innards under most of the house and the small fuse box was only fragments with two bits of bakelite underneath the mounting screws. The poor woman who owned the house was making a cuppa when the 'phone blew up. She nearly cashed in her chips.

Much later, in Canberra, an Indian born colleague, a devout Hindu and a pretentious twit whom I didn't much like, had put up an imposing array of Christmas decorations. A thunderbolt crisped them all, set fire to the lounge and, for good measure melted most of his air-con ducting. Cost him about $30,000 to have it all put right. He also didn't believe in insurance which he claimed was a Western plot to enslave the masses.

He was less than impressed when I told him it was probably Divine intervention and he should have known better than to put up Christian decorations. Like I said, I didn't much like him.

I was in Katmandu, a Hindu nation, when a lightning bolt clove one of the principal temples in half. This threw the local religious leaders into a near panic. (The Goddess of lightning is also the Goddess of modesty so houses and temples are decorated with obscene carvings and paintings. The theory being that when the Goddess takes aim with a thunderbolt her sensibilities are so shaken it puts her off her aim and this particular temple was liberally decorated). The religious leaders went into a retreat to consider the matter, emerging a couple of days later to say there was nothing basically wrong with the theology. The lightning bolt was a warning against all the fornicating hippies that then infested the city. Next day there were truckloads of hippies being deported over the border to India.