As New Englanders, we’re accustomed to severe thunderstorms and other extreme weather events that are often accompanied by lightning. Whether your house takes a direct hit from lightning or the lightning enters your home via outside wires or pipes in the ground, a strike can cause extensive damage to your house, other structures on your property, and your belongings. At Gilbert Insurance, we want local homeowners to know more about the common perils that can affect their property, such as a lightning strike, and what their home insurance will and will not cover.

Homeowners Insurance Includes Four Coverage Areas for Lightning Strike

If your house is hit by lightning, it can result in a range of dangerous situations, from an explosive power surge that severely damages electronics and appliances to thunderous shock waves that can easily fracture foundations, blow out plaster walls, and shatter glass windows and doors. In addition, a lightning strike to your home can start a devastating house fire that leaves your property and possessions in ruins.

After a lightning strike, the costs associated with repairing structural damages to your home, replacing belongings that have been destroyed, and fixing up outdoor property that has been impacted, such as fences, sheds, valuable landscaping, and even your irrigation system, can be very high. However, the standard homeowners insurance policy typically helps pay for these types of expenses because it includes the following four coverage areas:

  1. Dwelling Coverage, which helps pay for the structural repairs a home and any attached structures, like a garage, may require after a lightning strike.
  2. Other Structures Coverage, which assists with the costs of refurbishing detached structures, such as sheds, fences, guest cottages, driveways, gazebos, barns, detached garages, and more, if they are damaged by a lightning strike.
  3. Personal Property Coverage, which aids with paying for the expense of repairing or replacing personal belongings that were damaged or destroyed because of a lightning strike as long as the home insurance policy includes the Replacement Cost on Contents endorsement. Personal property coverage may also include reimbursement for replacing trees, shrubs, and other landscaping damaged by lightning.
  4. Loss of Use Coverage, which assists with the costs of relocating a homeowner and their family to a hotel or a short-term rental if lightning strike damage has left their house unlivable during the repair or rebuild process. Loss of use also typically includes coverage for additional living expenses, such as food, laundry, moving and storage, and pet boarding, that may be incurred beyond a family’s normal spending because of their temporary living situation.

When Homeowners Insurance May and May Not Cover a Lightning Strike

There are several different types of lightning strikes that can impact your home, and not all are easy to make a claim against. Below are discussions of three common lightning strike scenarios and the likelihood in each case of a claim being paid out:

  1. A Direct Hit. In this scenario, lightning uses your home, and its walls, electrical wiring, and pipes, as a conduit to get from the atmosphere to the ground. This type of strike generally causes the most harm to a home, igniting fires, causing serious structural damage, and frying connected electronics and appliances. However, if lightning hits a home directly, it is generally a straightforward claims evaluation for an insurance company as there is usually very clear proof that the lightning strike was the cause of the home’s damages.
  2. A Close Call (or Near Miss). This is a situation when lightning strikes near your home but doesn’t make direct contact. The energy from a nearby lightning strike can enter your home’s electrical panel or enter the home through conductive metals, such as plumbing or metal bars in your foundation, and cause substantial damage. The impact to your property with this type of strike is typically less than with a direct hit. However, the claims process can be more difficult in these cases because the insurance company cannot always draw a clear correlation between the lightning strike and damages to your home.
  3. A Ground Surge. When lightning strikes the ground or an object on the ground, it often creates a dangerous current that can impact power lines, communication lines, and electrical and electronic equipment. As a result, homes in neighborhoods up to several miles away from the strike may experience a surge in voltage that leads to damages. However, insurance companies typically pay out far fewer claims in a ground surge situation because it’s difficult to establish the true cause of the damages to your property.

In addition, a homeowner could experience a situation in which a tree on their property is hit by lightning, causing it to fall and damage their home or other structures on their property. Typically, home insurance covers fallen trees when the cause is lightning and may help you pay not only for the cost to remove the tree from your property, but also for the expenses related to fixing or replacing what the tree smashed into.

It Helps to Have a Highly Knowledgeable Professional, Like Gilbert Insurance, on Your Side

By providing this information, we hope it has helped you understand how a standard homeowners policy may cover damage to your home, belongings, or other structures on your property caused by a lightning strike. However, you should also be aware that the level of protection in a standard homeowners policy is not always sufficient to fully replace a homeowner’s valuables damaged by lightning or to fully restore a home to the exact condition it was in prior to a lightning strike.

It’s important to speak with a local, experienced insurance professional, like Gilbert, who can provide you with personalized home insurance recommendations based on your specific property and personal items. If we uncover risky gaps in your current home insurance solution, we have access to many affordable options that can broaden your coverage for lightning strikes, including scheduled personal property, guaranteed replacement cost, and home systems protection endorsements.

We have shared a lot about how a lightning strike to your home, whether it is a direct hit or lands nearby, can cause substantial damage to your property. However, your house remains the safest place to take cover when a storm threatens as long as you are careful to avoid dangers such as showering, standing by windows, or using corded electronics.

In addition, you may be able to better safeguard your home and your belongings from the worst consequences of a lightning strike by using surge protection devices in conjunction with a whole house lightning protection system. In fact, if you purchase a home that already has a lightning protection system or decide to invest in one for your current house, you could be eligible for a discount on your homeowners policy. Please call the Gilbert team if you would like to hear more about this and other opportunities to save on your home insurance or cost-effectively expand your coverage.