It's safest to stay home New Year's Eve

Wrong! The neighbor's house three doors down from us got struck by lightning! The roof split open like a potato left in the microwave too long. His gutters and downspouts were all over his front yard. There were also some dead birds laying there. Luckily nobody was in the part of the house that got struck. As the other neighbors scurried out to see what happened, I found out that a few of them had a bit of a power surge which blew out several appliances! Our development was built in the mid '70s. At that time they used breaker boxes made by a company called Federal Pacific. That company has since folded under the weight of lawsuits. You see, their circuit breakers wouldn't break! They were useless. Some houses with Federal Pacific boxes burned to the ground. Armed with this information, I had our box replaced a couple of months ago. Whew!