BobH wrote:...
Don't you now live in the Tampa Bay area? That is the lightning capital of the world and not immune to tornadoes. When we lived in Clearwater, we occasionally had debris land in our yard from tornadoes around us. We had
everything plugged into surge protectors and still I lost several modems and one PC.
One word:
Badgers 
Yes, I'm in the Lightning Capital of the World!
Modems were a real problem, especially in the "early days" when most modems were plugged directly into the phone network, which happily transferred any pulses and surges that the phone network didn't mind into the modem.
As the phone networks were primarily electro-mechanical switching systems, and the electronics were all on the other end and protected, only BIG surges were surpressed, and by slow gas discharge tubes. "Small" surges were conducted and any above a few dozen volts were enough to fry modems and PC mother boards.
There was almost no protection from that direction. Think the USS Enterprise taking phaser fire with shields down in "The Wrath of Khan". A few clamping diodes were the protection devices on those inputs, and when they failed (most times failing short instead of open) then the modem and the motherboard self-destructs with direct paths from power to ground.
I'm fortunate to have NO phone lines to my computer (and none to the house), and my broadband is Verizon's FIOS, which is fiber (non-conductive!) up to the network interface box on my outside wall. I could run the coax through a strip that adds network surge protection to the protection on the power lines, but as Verizon owns the router it's not worth it. Most of my devices connect wirelessly, so no surges will get to the end-user device even if a killer surge hits the router. The two PCs I run hard wire networks from the router DO have the network routed through the surge protection in the UPSs.
And, in response to YOUR word:
(Good grief, exploding manholes.)
