so sorry to hear, Frederick - did you have any surge protection devices?
Yes, whole house and point of use (many of these).
The only place I have found any burn marks is on the surge suppressor for the electric dog fence wire, the two wires from the fence (out in the yard, underground) run through this unit and into the actual fence driver unit. The suppressor is plugged into a AC outlet, I suppose to pick up a ground.
All of this fence stuff is located in the garage - where the GFI, 3 of the ELK units and the irrigation interface were located - all of which died. So I suppose that the surge could have been picked up by the fence wire (underground) and conveyed somehow to these other units.
Aside from the fence suppressor, the ELK suppressor and the GFI outlet, ALL of the other affected equipment was on the ethernet network. There was a run of CAT6 from the garage to the basement where a switch and ELK mainboard died. There is also a run of CAT6 from this basement area to the outside across the backyard (underground), down to the dock. There were runs of CAT6 (inside) from this switch to the other switches which died.
The ELK suppressor was connected to the phone wire which also runs outside, underground.
Perhaps some or all of the underground wires picked up a damaging impluse and took out some of the connected items. Don't know - don't know how to find out.
Of course there was a lot of connected equipment that wasn't affected - at least so far - perhaps in time other units will fail. Oddly the lights didn't flicker a bit.
All in all it's been a very interesting experience - the wife hasn't said a negative thing yet and she thinks most of the HA stuff is for the birds.
If anything interesting happens I will keep you posted. Waiting now for lots of replacement parts to arrive.