One of the biggest problems with lighting is not normally the direct hit, many strikes back in the power line grid can cause damage even when the hit was several miles away.  When a power relay station takes a thump, the station will recover sending high voltage spikes several times higher than the normal line voltage.  During the strike the power station will drop, you loose your AC first and then the surge comes.  To protect your equipment, adding a Power Control or Power Contactor allows AC power to be removed from the equipment until you manually power it back on.  

Note that removal of the ground to the equipment is very important.  When lighting storms approach, your equipment should be essentially unplugged and coax disconnected, ( See Patch Panel), idea is to have your equipment isolated from any connections.  With most amateur radio stations having several pieces of equipment, it's kind of a pain pulling plugs and plugging them back in later.  At my station the power control actually has 24 J1 110 VAC receptacles protected where as only one button has to be pushed to power everything on, and 2 J1 220 VAC receptacles are controlled by the 220 Power Contactor.

Note:  The 220 control could use a 110VAC coil relay, move the top connection of the relay coil to the center or ground.