"James Wilkinson Sword"
news alt.home.repair, wrote:

On Wed, 01 Feb 2017 17:31:50 -0000, Mr. Man-wai Chang
wrote:

A small town's sudden power surge fried tech gear in hundreds of
homes

Full story:
http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2017/01/...dden-power-sur
ge-fried-tech-gear-in-hundreds-homes.html


Residents in the small Pennsylvania town of Brookville must've
wondered what on earth was going on earlier this month when a
sudden power surge caused electrical appliances and gizmos in up
to 1,000 homes to fry, explode, or simply conk out.

What may have momentarily seemed like some kind of weird
supernatural happening was actually an electrical surge caused by
a failed power line component, according to an AP report. Local
media said that "damage ranged from residents losing a
refrigerator to losing all appliances in the kitchen or losing
everything in the house."

Up to a quarter of the town's 4,000 residents were thought to
have been affected by the incident, with many reporting fried
computers, burned electrical meters, and damaged power strips.
Some even spoke of fluorescent lights suddenly exploding.

When the surge occurred, the high volume of calls flooding into
the emergency services forced the local fire department to call
for extra help from three nearby facilities.

As for the local cops, the incident tripped its main office
radio, causing them to miss the first emergency calls. The first
they knew something was up was when they heard the fire trucks
roaring through the town.

"We were fortunate that nobody was hurt," Tracy Zents, the
director of Jefferson County's Department of Emergency Services,
told AP.

You should have anything expensive in a UPS.

The UPS would have fried as well under those conditions. And,
depending on internal UPS design characteristics, may/may not have
done any good for the device plugged into it. It depends on several
things. Which lines got energized way above the normal voltage and
for how long. Is the UPS truely seperating the inverter/battery
backup from the main AC line, or, is it a cheaper unit where the
plugins aren't actually isolated from the main incoming power? IE: is
it really running the out plugs on battery via inverter or, is it
also supplying filtered power while the AC is good via the ac lines
feeding the UPS?

If it's isolating the battery and charging circuitry then, your risk
of being toasted if something roasts the ups is smaller, but, not by
much.





--
Sarcasm, because beating the living **** out of deserving people is
illegal.