Safe haven

As Minnesota marks Severe Weather Awareness Week from April 8-12, Kevin and Laura Bluml’s experience serves as a reminder of nature’s power and the importance of preparedness. 

The Blumls live on just over two acres overlooking the Minnesota River in Eden Prairie. Their large picture window frames daily scenes of natural beauty, including deer, flocks of turkeys, and the changing seasons.

Yet on Nov. 9, 2022, they experienced a different side of nature when their house was struck by lightning. A lightning protection system that they had installed when they built the house in 1993 saved the house from a possibly devastating fire. 

During a severe storm, Laura, who was awake when the strike occurred at 4:30 a.m., heard a loud boom.

“It sounded like a bomb had gone off,” she recalled. “There was thunder and lightning right on top of each other, and we knew we’d been hit. The house shook like crazy and set off our security alarm.”

But other than a light switch that was blown off the wall and split in two with some singe marks, there was no other visually obvious evidence of a lightning strike. 

Since they smelled a bit of smoke, the couple called 911 and were advised to leave the house. Thinking the house did not seem unsafe as there were no evident flames, they dressed and reluctantly headed out into the still-raging thunderstorm.

The initial firefighters checked the attic space and found a small amount of smoke, which resulted in more trucks until “the street was lined with them,” said Laura. Firefighters also removed a soffit, where they found no flames, but “it looked like a charcoal grill almost completely out, with dots of orange periodically,” recalled Laura. 

She can joke now about how she cringed as firefighters tromped onto her brand-new white carpet in their muddy, wet boots. Yet the couple knew how fortunate they had been to escape the complete destruction of their home, thanks to the precautions they took during its construction.

“The fire chief said to us afterwards, ‘Thank you for doing such a good job of protecting your house and yourselves and us because it would have been a raging inferno, and you would have definitely lost your house,” Laura said. 

Lightning protection explained

Simply put, a lightning protection system consists of several components that divert lightning from a structure and create a safer route for lightning to go into the ground. Air terminals, or lightning rods, are strategically placed on a roof, connected to cables that run through the structure and down into the ground.

Lightning then goes into the ground rather than “punching a hole through your roof and taking a shortcut through the living room,” Kevin said.

Since the system was part of the plan from the beginning, it is unobtrusive. “The cables can be seen in a few places but are mostly hidden,” Kevin added.

A lightning protection system typically comprises about 1% of the total building cost, according to the Lightning Protection Institute. Though it is easiest and most cost-effective to install a system at the beginning, they can also be added to existing homes.

Kevin decided to have their system installed, as their house would be the tallest structure in the area. In recent years, Laura said a few other homes in their area have been hit by lightning. Two burned to the ground, and one sustained damage. 

Before the big strike, the Blumls knew they had been hit by lightning at least three or four times, taking out their electronics and a sprinkler system in the past.

“When we’ve had our roof replaced in the past, the aerials have been taken down and we can see little marks on them where they had been hit, but nothing like this time,” said Laura.

Though a lightning strike can’t be prevented, “we felt good that we had protected ourselves as much as we could,” Laura added. 

According to the Lightning Protection Institute, “Direct lightning strikes cause fire damage in excess of $200 million per year, and insurance companies pay claims in the billions of dollars associated with lightning either directly or indirectly.”

Though the Blumls avoided fiery destruction, the lightning strike caused a cascade of other damage to their home.

“It still had enough residual power to fry 90% of the electronics in the house,” recalled Kevin. He joked about getting his wish for a bigger television, though that wasn’t the way he had in mind. 

Their freezer panel, double oven, garage door, and underground sprinkler system were all damaged. The security system was knocked out, preventing it from sending out signals after the lightning strike. They also ultimately had to replace the truss and the roof decking, which led to some stucco being redone. The insurance company insisted they replace all the insulation in their attic to prevent possible residual smoke smell.

In all, it was almost a full year and an insurance claim totaling $99,545 before all the work was completed in September 2023. The Blumls knew they were fortunate to be able to stay in their home during all the repairs, as many lightning strike victims can be out of their homes for a year or more, said Laura. 

As avid travelers, the Blumls were sobered by the realization that if they had not been home during the lightning strike, things could have been much worse.

“What we had in place did as much as it could, but knocking out our security system made us hesitant to be gone in storm season if that should happen again,” Kevin said. “Everything we did still didn’t completely protect us.”

An added layer of protection

This thought led Kevin to devise a “mini-security system that monitors fire-related things: smoke detectors, heat detectors, and water flow in case the sprinkler is activated.”

You can’t stop everything but you pick and choose your battles and how much money you want to spend and how much you want to protect based on what’s most likely to happen.”

Kevin Bluml

The system is “battery-run, so it is not connected to anything wired, so it’s not susceptible to weather issues,” he explained. “It also uses a cellular connection for contacting the monitoring system and will also monitor the bigger system to let us know if the cellular has gone out on that, so they are backing with other up. So if there is some problem, we can react to it in some fashion.”

As part of the restoration, the Blumls, at their own cost, replaced the existing sprinkler system with a wet and dry system sprinkler so that nitrogen and then water are expelled in a fire.

“Between adding the dry system and the secondary security system, that gives us some comfort that we have done everything we can to protect our home,” Kevin said. 

Laura noted that “since a lightning protection system can only protect the structure, we added whole house surge protection to protect our electrical equipment and prevent the spread of lightning energy through the house electrical wiring.”

“You can’t stop everything but you pick and choose your battles and how much money you want to spend and how much you want to protect based on what’s most likely to happen,” Kevin said. “Since we know we’ve been hit by lightning at least three to four times, we know that is going to be the most glaring issue for us.” 

Though perhaps not a “fun” part of designing one’s dream home, like countertops or beautiful picture windows, a certified lightning protection system is worth the minimal extra cost if you ask the Blumls.

“It’s not a complicated system,” said Kevin. “It’s not high-tech, but it works. It’s really just a risk decision.”