The Juvenile Evaluation Center (JEC), a training school for youths, is situated on the Blue Ridge Mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. The Challenge JEC took over the site of a former U.S. Army hospital in 1961. Their facility sits in a highly lightning-prone area and is subject to “ground scatter” lightning— dangerous blue lines of elec- tricity that jump above and around the ground. Thirteen buildings are fed with underground cable to the main building that hous- es the Toshiba DK424 phone system with four expansion cabinets and the central communications. When lightning strikes the mountain, there is a poten- tial for the entire phone sys- tem to go down. Electronic systems, such as computer and telephone sys- tems, are not capable of han- dling these strong surges. A lightning

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