Lightning strikes

Well when I was growing up, my mom used to always say that when the weather gets as intense as it has been, You really should turn off all the lights in the home and work with the bare minimum. We used to read a book or sit by the window and look out at the storm. It was nice to watch and I agree very "humbling" to see what is out there beyond our control.

I don't have any real knowledge on tips to preventing this from happening but I would assume that the use of electrical energy may react light a magnet to the energy from lightening which is why I stick to my moms advice and turn off anything eletrical at home and sit tight until it blows over. If i'm in the office I would leave everything on and be glad that everything burnt out so i could go home to my comfy bed!

My iMac was fried in the same storm. I saw it coming, and even though it was plugged into a surge protector, I decided to unplug it. Unfortunately, the lightning went through my cable, into the cable modem (which it killed), through the router (also dead), and into the computer. I have the extended warranty, which explicitly excludes lightning strikes, but the apple store is covering it anyway.
In the future, I'm going to get a better surge protector and use my computer wirelessly.

What should E and K do about their computers? Can anyone explain what happened? Can it be prevented?

Unless they see physical damage to the computers motherboard, buy a new power supply. Costs between $30-60 and installation takes about 20 minutes.

How to prevent this from happening?! Buy a good surge protector with a UL listing. Power strips does not count. The surge protector should be able to handle 600 joules and have 330V clamping voltage.

I also once lost an ethernet card to a lighting strike. I replaced the card, and everything was fine. Back then, ethernet cards were separate from the motherboard board, though. Now it's usually part of the motherboard, which may make it hard to fix. You may be able to add in a new ethernet card.

For the wrecked computer, you'll probably need to just replace it. Hopefully, they can still get any important data they may have off their hard drive.

Your own paper's webpage had a video about lighting safety a few days ago. Pretty much what you want to do is head for shelter. A building or car (with a metal roof) is shelter. A lone tree is not. You never want to be near a lone tree, out in an open field, or in a pool. The video had one additional piece of advice I had not heard: if you are stuck in a field, lower yourself as much as possible, but stand on one foot. That way if the lighting passes across the ground beneath you, you don't provide a path through your body, between your two legs.

By the way, the often repeated statement that the rubber of a cars tires provides protection is false. What provides protection is the metal cage around you. The lighting passes from the car to the ground just as easily as it passes through the hundreds of feet of air above you.

A surge protector (UL Listed or not) isn't going to stop a lightning blast - the lightning surge is just going to arc across it anyways. If you're really worried about lightning strikes, then unplug your sensitive electronics from any power and network connections they have (and anything else) until the storm passes.

Several years ago, we also had lightning strike a tree in our yard. The damage to our home wasn't too bad, less than a thousand dollars or so. But, our homeowner's insurance policy covered about half of it. If you have a homeowner's policy, I'd check there first... Good luck!