Lightning Damage claims · № 07 of 12
A lightning strike is three claims in one
At a glance
- Licensed Illinois public adjusters
- $0 upfront — fee from the recovery only
- Residential & commercial
- Lincolnshire, IL · Mon–Fri 8:00 AM – 5:00 PM
- Denied & underpaid claims re-opened
A lightning claim almost never looks like the storm that caused it. The strike lasts a fraction of a second, and afterwards the house is standing, the roof looks fine from the driveway, and the only obvious casualty is a television that will not turn on. Two weeks later the air conditioning stops, the garage door opener is dead, and a brown stain is spreading across a bedroom ceiling under a hole in the roof nobody went up to look for. Lightning is a named peril on essentially every standard Illinois homeowners policy, so the argument is almost never whether you are covered — it is how far the carrier is willing to agree the current travelled.
A strike does its damage in three separate ways, and a claim that captures only one of them is an underpaid claim. The direct hit destroys whatever it enters: a masonry chimney, a ridge vent, fascia and decking, or a tree at the roofline that then comes down on the structure. The current then goes looking for ground through anything that conducts — branch wiring, copper plumbing, a gas line, a satellite or cable run, the steel in reinforced concrete — and what it leaves along that path is heat damage inside walls that no one can see from a room. Third, the surge that follows reaches well past the strike point and kills anything with a circuit board: furnace and air-conditioning control boards, well and sump pumps, appliances, security and irrigation systems, door openers, and the breakers and wiring in the panel itself.
We work a lightning loss as the multi-system claim it is. That means finding and photographing the entry point on the roof or exterior rather than accepting that there wasn’t one, having the service panel and branch circuits evaluated instead of walking the house switching lights on, inventorying every piece of equipment that failed with a diagnosis tying it to the strike date, and claiming the fire, smoke and water damage a strike routinely starts inside an attic or a wall cavity. It also means handling the part carriers push back on hardest — the line between a strike the policy covers outright and a power surge the same policy may treat under different terms.
What the damage looks like
- A scorched or splintered entry point — chimney crown, ridge, vent, fascia, or a struck tree right at the roofline
- Breakers that will not reset, or a service panel with heat discoloration, melted insulation or a burnt smell
- Several unrelated devices dead at the same moment: HVAC control board, well or sump pump, opener, modem, appliances
- One circuit out — lights and outlets in part of the house dead while everything else runs normally
- Ceiling stains or attic scorching showing up days later, from a roof opening or a start that smouldered inside a cavity
- A new pinhole leak or damaged fitting where current jumped to a copper pipe to reach ground
What carriers routinely leave out
- The roof entry point itself — a strike punches through shingles, decking and underlayment, and the leak it creates becomes a separate ceiling and insulation loss weeks later
- Hardwired systems priced one at a time instead of claimed as one surge event: HVAC boards, well pump, sump pump, water-heater controls, openers, irrigation and security panels
- The service panel, breakers and branch wiring — heat damage inside a conductor does not show on the outside and stays in the wall as a fire risk
- Partial failures: a furnace or appliance that still runs on a degraded board and quits months after the file is closed
- Smoke, soot and water damage from the fire a strike started or the sprinkler head it set off
- Additional living expenses for the time the property has no power, no heat or an open roof
Every item on this list is money. Our job is making sure each one is documented, valued and in the claim.
Highly recommend this company! They were patient with us — walked us through the whole process a few times, answered a million questions and explained everything in detail. Really appreciate that we were never pressured into more expensive options. The process was smooth and transparent from beginning to end.
Lightning Damage questions, answered
Is lightning damage covered by homeowners insurance in Illinois?
On essentially every standard Illinois policy, yes — lightning is a named peril in its own right, and fire resulting from a strike is covered as well. Coverage is rarely the fight. Scope is: how much of the wiring, how many of the systems and which failed electronics the carrier agrees belong to the same event, and whether the roof entry point is ever found at all.
Nothing here was struck directly. My electronics just died during the storm — is that still a claim?
Often, and this is where policy language matters most. Many forms cover sudden and accidental damage from artificially generated electrical current, while limiting or excluding the electronic components themselves unless a fire follows, and some carriers cover surge only by endorsement. The wording differs between policies, so it is worth reading yours rather than assuming the first answer you are given is the last one.
How do you prove lightning caused the damage?
Through timing and pattern, not assertion. Strike data for the location and date, the physical entry point, the simultaneous failure of several unrelated systems, and a technician’s diagnosis that names surge rather than age. Photograph everything and keep the failed equipment — a dead control board with a diagnosis attached is evidence, and once it goes in a skip it is gone.
The insurer will replace my furnace control board but not the furnace. Is that right?
Sometimes. A board swap is the correct repair when the board is genuinely all that took current. It is not when the compressor, the motor windings or the wiring degraded at the same moment, because the unit will fail again outside the claim. The deciding factor is what the technician’s diagnosis actually says, which is why that diagnosis belongs in the file before anyone agrees to a repair.
My claim was closed and then the air conditioner failed two months later. Is it too late?
No. Surge damage that degrades a component rather than destroying it outright regularly surfaces weeks or months afterwards, and a closed file can be reopened when a later failure traces back to the covered event. What makes that possible is a service report linking the failure to the strike date, so get the cause written down at the time of repair, not from memory afterwards.
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