Power surge and the earth spike

[ELECT 1]

Ok, so the criminals, during load shedding, stole a bussbar, and some neutral wires from a transformer.
Now when the power came back on, some dwellings appliances burnt out. The power coming in was over 400v plus on single phase.
Took best part of half a day for the council to reinstate the power after fixing the problem. They also put razor wire all over the transformers and tried to secure what they can.
Now we checked the earth spikes of two of the dwellings that got struck and found that both earth spikes were fully operational, both had the correct readings.
So now i assume that even good earthing, cant always guarantee protection from a power surge.
I do know earth spike and earthing is very important on 380V installations,

[AndyD]

Now we checked the earth spikes of two of the dwellings that got struck and found that both earth spikes were fully operational, both had the correct readings.

What was the Ra readings? Is the earthing tn-c-s PME?

The earthing of an installation is highly unlikely to have any effect on what damage is done when a neutral is floating. What happens in this situation isn't a 'surge' as such, it's a prolonged over-voltage event.