More likely that a primary phase faulted but didn't clear a switch, somewhere down the line, I have seen many brown outs from storms knocking tree limbs down on power lines but not enough to open the protector, these can last from seconds to as long as an hour or more, this would not damage most electronic equipment but can damage many types of motors such as refrigerators, furnace motors if they stay pulled in, and or AC units, if this is the kind of damage you have then you had a long term brown out.
Lightning has three forms, near field, direct point of attachment, or indirect point of attachment to a power line or tell/cable.
Near field will damage mostly electronics and such things the have a loop such as networks or cables which takes out TV tuners, phones, and some times even surround sounds where you might have a sub woofer plugged in across the room on a different circuit, what you see with a near field is TVSS devices have little to no effect in protecting most appliances when hit by a near field (lightning hits a tree or other point within 100 to 300 feet from the building) as the damage is cause by induced currents not direct currents, very little to no damage is caused in the building wiring.
Direct lightning strikes will just flat out do damage, both physical and electrical, with a direct strike you will see building damage and or wiring damage to a point that the insulation can be blown off the wiring, shattered like glass.
Indirect lightning strikes such as ones that hit power lines or cable/phones, will damage most appliances depending upon how close down the line the POA was to the building, but this is the type of strike that TVSS is most effective against, as it acts more like a surge then a lightning event, but can send several thousands of volts through a house with out any surge protection, which can also damage building wiring but you don't see the physical damage done to the building that a direct strike can do. (well except in the case of a fire)
A lightning event can be one or a combination of any of the above types of lightning strikes.
@ KVA:
What kind of damage did you receive? if any?