Lightning Only Strikes Once. Right? Please?

*Just a warning:  This may get long and wordy.  I just want to document some of these stories for later :)

It's been a whirlwind 4 days around here.  Early, early (like 3am early) Thursday morning severe storms rolled through our area.  Keenan and I woke up around 3:15 from the lightning and thunder that just kept getting closer together and louder.  We were expecting one or more of the kids to wake up as well.  I pulled my phone from the charger on my nightstand to check the radar.  I was mainly concerned about tornadoes, but also wanted to see how long this storm was going to last.  I had just turned my phone off when another bright flash of lightning lit up our house.  The crack/boom that followed was not thunder, although I'm sure there was some.  Keenan and I popped out of bed immediately.  I knew that strike had hit nearby, but it wasn't until I saw the smoke in our living room that I realized it had hit our house.

I'd like to say I remained calm, but panic quickly set in.  As I ran for the phone to call 911, Keenan had to remind me to use my cell phone that was in my hand!  Doh!  Keenan had figured out the lightning had hit our chimney and he went to investigate.  I went to the kids who were now awake and crying.  We huddled together on Asher's bed while I talked to the 911 dispatcher.  After I told her there was smoke she insisted we get out of the house.  I got to the front door holding Asher and turned back to make sure Ari and Keira were with me.  My sweet, smart Ari was crawling along the floor just like you're supposed to!  We have praised him so much for his level-headed thinking!  Anyway...I stepped onto the front porch and realized "I don't want to go out here.  It's pouring and there's crazy lightning!"  Keenan still wasn't with us.  The operator asked if we were out of the house.  I basically argued with her about going out in this weather and Keenan not being with us.  Again, not a very proud moment for me!  Looking back now, Keenan and I both knew we didn't see visible signs of a fire and didn't feel an extreme sense of urgency.

Keenan met up with us and had even grabbed an umbrella!  Without a word, we made a bee-line for our neighbors house across the street.  My plan was just to hang out on their giant porch and watch for the fire department.  I didn't relay this plan to the kids, and Keira immediately ran up and rang the doorbell!  Our sweet neighbors took us right in, gave us robes, slippers and blankets.  They were already up from the storm as well, so I don't feel totally awful about waking them up at 4am!  The police and fire departments were at our house in record time.  In all, 4 police cars, 3 fire trucks and the fire chief came to our rescue!  Here's a blurry cell phone pic from across the street, through the rain.

No fire!  We were able to get back in our house around 5am.  By some miracle, we put the kids back in their beds and they stayed there and went to sleep!  It took Keenan and me a while to settle down, but I think we did sleep for an hour or so.  Around 7am we heard a mild crash and couldn't figure out what it could be - the storm was over.  When we finally got up to investigate we discovered the small, glass table on our patio and completely shattered.  No idea why or how, but not really something we needed after our crazy morning.  We spent the rest of Thursday figuring out what all was affected by the strike and just kind of in a daze.  I was running on adrenaline and coffee most of the day.

So here's the run-down of what happened.  We have a fireplace insert that basically acts like a wood-burning stove.  Here's what it looks like:

In order for it to work properly, the flue has to be much smaller than a standard fireplace flue.  To do that, we have a stainless steel, 6" diameter flue liner running the length of our chimney with a cap at the top.  Another important component is the blower.  This is what gets the warm air out into our living room.  The blower is electric and we still had it plugged in to a nearby outlet (behind the broom on the left of the picture).  The lightning hit the cap at the top of the chimney, traveled down the liner and through the fireplace (somehow).  It then made it's way through the power cord into the outlet.  The large, black frame around the insert isn't attached to the fireplace and it was blown off onto the coffee table at the bottom of the picture.  The power cord exploded into about 5 pieces (I found bits of wire and plastic on the other side of the room!) and blew out the outlet.  The smoke was from the outlet, but there was also a lot of ash mixed in making it seem worse.  Here's the aftermath:

We had an electrician out that same day.  He was able to fix the outlet and reset all the others that had tripped during the surge.  He didn't seem concerned about the overall wiring so I guess we'll just have to wait and see how things hold up.  As far as the initial toll, the surge fried the circuit boards in our modem, garage door opener, oven display (the oven still works) and the dishwasher.  So far the modem has been replaced, but it looks like it'll be at least Wednesday for the rest.  I stocked up on paper plates today and I'm getting my workout opening and closing the garage door by hand!

We just continue to count our blessings in this situation.  Things could have been so much worse.  Later that day we found a post on facebook from a page that manages the police scanners with the quote "Command advising fireplace has been blown off."  Whoa!  So glad that sounds worse than what really happened!

Stay tuned for part 2!  Yes, sadly, there's a part 2!