I was often called to electrical problems following a storm. In one case, the lady said some of her receptacles aren't working. Then she took me down the yard, about a hundred feet from the house, to where a huge tree had a 2" strip of bark burned off both sides of the trunk by a lightning strike. Her deceased husband had installed a yard light on that tree (illegal). The wire was a long extension cord which ran into a shed, and he used to plug it into a receptacle, but it hadn't been plugged in, it was just hanging near a fridge. The fridge was plugged into the receptacle.
The lightning followed that cord down the tree, into the shed, jumped from the plug and peppered a bunch of small holes in the side of the fridge. The lightning then followed the fridge cord and into the circuit that ran underground to the house. It continued on into the breaker panel and was then distributed to the various receptacles. All of the receptacles were working, but the appliances weren't. She lost her small appliances and her stereo system and TV.
She asked me to write the bill, saying it was a power company fault, but I declined to do that. She intended to claim on the house insurance, but if the insurance company investigated and found it was due to lightning, I'd have been in trouble. My license was at stake, and I don't like to lie, anyway. I felt bad for her, and maybe the insurance took care of her.
In another case, a man had a disused TV tower by the corner of his house, about three feet from the house. There was no cable on the tower to conduct the lightning into the house. Lightning hit the tower and jumped across to a receptacle near the corner of the room. It blew the receptacle out of the wall, but no other damage. The following year, the same thing happened again, and that's when he decided to take the tower down.