Can electrical surges go through the FIOS ONT Box

Question

On Sept 8th something hit my Fios line and caused loss of equipment. There were no storms or electrical outages on Sept 8th. I was at my computer online when I got a message saying that my Ethernet was disconnected. Seconds later my system shut down. At first I had thought that I had a power failure but the lights never went out. Two computer systems that were on line are totally gone. On the third computer system the onboard Ethernet port is fried. My plasma TV HDMI port 1 is no longer useable. The cordless phones which I had just purchased two weeks ago are also fried. When this happened I lost the phone service, internet, and TV. I opened the ONT box and found that all the lights were out. I then plugged in a phone to check to see if I had a dial tone at the ONT. There was no power and no dial tone. I attempted to contact FIOS repairs using my cell phone. After being on hold for 3 1/2 hours I gave up. I called my daughter to login on line and chat with a Verizon tech. After an hour wait time she got through. The earliest available appointment to come to my home was for Sunday Sept 11th. Which meant that all my services would be down for 4 days. Yesterday, Sept 10th I noticed that some of the lights that were out on the router were back on. I tried the phones but they were still out. Then I tried the TV's. I managed to get 2 of three TV's working. The High Def TV would not come on. I disconnected the HDMI cable and attached a coaxial cable and the picture came on.Went out to the ONT box and most of the lights came back on. The internet light on the router was now lit but no activity on the Ethernet. I installed a wireless card on the machine that was still running and managed to get that online. All of my systems are plugged into surge arrestors. That includes the TV's, Router, computers and cordless phones. The Verizon tech had just left my home minutes ago. The Ethernet ports on the router were fried. The router was replaced. The DVR box that was connected to my Plasma was replaced due to the HDMI ports being fried. HDMI port 1 on my plasma was also no longer working. Switched over to HDMI port 2 and the picture came back on. Anything that was attached to the 2 computer systems were also fried. The 3rd system was offline when this had happened and the only thing that was effected was the Ethernet pot being fried. The tech said that no surge could come through the fiber optic network. If that statement is true then why were none of the surge suppressors tripped. And why would I suffer all this damage. It seems to me that the surge had come through and hit the FIOS box and anything that was connected was fried. Is this possible? I need some answers to explain just what caused this. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

There is no electrical connection between the Verizon Central Office and the ONT. It is strictly optical, so there is no conductor for the surge to travel down from the Central Office. So the ONT cannot be electrically damaged from the Optical end of the connection.
However the ONT could be damaged  from Coax or Ethernet end, or the ONT power supply could be 'fried' by a surge in the local power line. The Scenario is that if the surge voltage is high enough, it breaks the isolation normally provided by the power supplies in the equipment, and can propagate down the Coax and/or Ethernet cable and/or HDMI cable from either end. . In that case the ONT can effectively be 'fried' by having the surge propagate through the Coax or Ethernet (if you have Ethernet on the ONT instead of MoCA) to the ONT. It doesn't take a whole lot of energy to fry Coax or Ethernet ports on the devices.
The typical scenario is either some sort of accident drops a high tension line onto much lower voltage transmission line (this sometime happens when a vehicle collides with, and takes down a telephone pole, or large branch falls on a line). The other scenario is a direct lightning strike on the local distribution line. Either way, equipment that is supposed to see only 120VAC can in fact seen voltages in the thousand or tens of thousands of volts until the electric company's switching equipment either clear the fault, or shut down the line(s).. In either situation, considerable damage can be inflicted on just about anything electronic that was connected at the time. The energy delivered by a lightning bolt vastly exceeds the surge protection provided by any consumer surge protector.
From where you sit, whether it is the optical end that was damaged, or the ethernet/coax end of the ONT, the ONT will no longer provide service for you.
Also my experience with home use surge arresters is they cannot handle anywhere enough energy to be especially useful.
They also assume that the surge isn't 'common mode'. BTW, I am an Electrical Engineer with education in high voltage transmisson system and insulation.