He didn't have a surge protector? Sweet Jesus. I don't plug my backed-up PC into anything not surge protected.
I'm not saying it's worthless, but it's not silver bullet. You must plan for failure.
As others have said, electronics can get fried by power surges while plugged into even commercial grade surge suppressors. Home grade surge suppressors provide even less protection.
One of the few things that actually routinely comes with real surge arresters (i.e. gas-discharge tubes, not the MOVs plastered all over the place) is anything connected to a telephone line, e.g. A/VDSL modems. On some old PBXs for analog lines these were even contained in field-replaceable modules.
Much of Europe uses buried cables, so there's less risk from lightning strikes, and I think the higher line voltage (230V) reduces the effect of something like a dodgy elevator motor in the same billing.
I have visited the US a few times, where I remember the lights would dim momentarily if the garbage compactor or the dryer were used.