Electrical Breaker.

My Surge was a case of a storm took out power for a lot of folks... The power company contracted with another company to fix the lines, They hooked 'em up wrong so instead of 120 volts I had 240 (At least) and instead of 240 480 (At least) Voltage is based on the sound of a motor compared to a known error.

now that's a SURGE

A SPIKE.. Is also destructive which is why the spike guards are so handy.

Joules.

You have to check what the surge protectors state on the package.
Most of the ones found in stores are 200 or 600 Joules that protects you for squat.

A lightening strike near your home?
""An average bolt of lightning, striking from cloud to ground, contains roughly one billion (1,000,000,000) joules of energy"". A surge protector from Lowes is not going to stop that!

Other outside causes for a power surge.
""Every day, destructive electrical spikes and surges — caused by lightning or industrial and automobile accidents with utility poles — pass through the electrical lines and into your home.""

""These power surges or spikes can be caused by many things including the most obvious one – lightning. Surges can also be caused by birds and animals, falling trees, or vehicles crashing into power poles. Whatever the cause of these power surges, the results can be devastating""

I've had 2 transformers go by my house. One was an animal and another from lightening. And the third was lightening to ground. NONE of the hardware store surge protectors in my house worked for that level of voltage spike. Lunched 2 TV's and the amplifiers. All had surge protector plugs.

Just saying you wouldn't know if there was a car crash into a pole that spiked the voltage and/or lightening which can happen a long distance from the building and still cause a failure at your location.

A GFCI does not protect hardware at all. (A GFCI circuit breaker combo will but only to the extend that the Circuit Breaker does)

A GFCI protects WetWare (That is YOU) it has one and only one job, TO SAVE YOUR LIFE (Or the life of another) that is its soul function, to save lives.

Not hardware but People. (or pets, or pests for that matter).

That said there are "Surge Guards" and there are Surge Guards.. (Other than the quote marks what's the difference you ask?)

Most of those outlet strips or plug in devices and this includes the "Whole House Surge Protectors" are simply spike supressors, Metal Oxcide Varisistors (MOVs) that clip a SPIKE.. If you have ever heart them hit with a true SURGE (Which lasts much longer than a spike) Well.. Imagine the park on July 4when the Fireworks are going off.. Yup, that's what my basement sounded like with the power company's contractors messed up and hit me with excessive voltage.The good news is they did their job (But they sure went BANG).

A real surge guard, however,, very likely would not have made a difference in your case

These are computers that monitor voltage, frequency and (optionally) other factors. if the voltage/frequency or optionally other factors exceed pre-set limts in any direction (up or down) they shut you off.. or in one case take over.

One of the devices protecting this computer is a true Surge Guard.. IF voltage in the park goes high or low, or if frequency goes high or low, IT shuts off power to the RV since NO power is safer than BAD power.

Another is a Prosine 2.0 TSW Inverter

it too monitors Voltage, Frequency and WAVEFORM

If the power coming in is too high, or low in either frequency or voltage or if it's just flat too dirty (noisy) the Prosine kicks in and eats battery power to run things. including this laptop.

now the Fun item.. Since I feed the batteries with a DIFFERENT charger.. That can really clean up dirty power

What would I suggest for you.

Unless you can record some serious SURGE voltages (which I doubt you have) A brute force line filter will block much of the noise, also if placed ahead of a Surge Strip, it will greatly imnprove it's function as well since it tends to block the spike (The brute force filters really do not like to let noise through).

I would suggest checking that the grounding for the building and the ground/neutral bond are good and solid. Also it would be very wise to check that any other incoming utilities (telephone, cable TV, etc.) have their grounds properly and solidly tied into the electrical ground, as I believe is required by code.

In a house where I used to live that had a hodgepodge of electrical wiring, ranging from old knob-and-tube to quite recent work, I had trouble with surges because the telephone line ground and the electrical system ground were not well connected. Things that connect to both, such as my DSL modem, would give trouble due apparently to differential voltages between the two systems. It was unfortunately not easy to solve the underlying problem as the two utilities entered the house on opposite sides.

480V 400A main would to me imply three-phase 480/277 power, and perhaps an on-premsis transformer to get 120V power (or possibly a separate utility connection). If this is the power supply you have, a surge suppression system would be rather more complex than for a normal house and presumably rather more expensive.

Known problem with surges, they should be paying for damage.
You need to have someone check out the stepdown transformer in the church. If not properly connected and grounded on the secondary side surges can be more damaging. This can effect any of the plug-in style surge protectors no how good they are.

Checked the main panel today. 480V 400 amp main. Will be checking with the utility.

Golden HVAC you said: As for the church, there is a problem that keeps burning up the surge protectors"
We had a spike go through one surge protector that took out the organ but no other equipment was affected. Sound system, computer printer etc.

The utility seems to have a history of issues in the area of the church. They have an alert system that notifies those affected of the number of people affected and when service will be restored estimate. Friday's surge supposedly took out 750 people but the church had the surge but no power loss. The surge also affected my house but no power loss and no damage.

Install a cut off switch for the organ when not is use.

Since it sets idle most of the time......

The Panamax 400 amp rated surge protector I installed on our vacation cottage main panel cost about $150.

You need to find out what type of surge caused the problem. Many utilities install surge suppressors on the primary side of the high voltage transformers.
You need or the person from the church need to call the utility. Why spend your money to install equipment if the utility will do it for free. They may pay for the damaged items.

It is possible to buy or build a surge protector for an individual device like your organ. There are also low/ high voltage protective contactors that will protect that circuit. It is about how much protection you are willing to install to protect that organ's circuit.