There is always a trade off. Fast snubbing of the coils causes
significantly slower contact opening, which can cause arcing and welding.
Snubbing with a zener across the transistor improves the turn off time by
as much as 3x, and with proper selection of the zener the transistors are
safe.  I use this extensively to protect our relay drivers and we make a
lot of devices with relays.

If there is enough capacitance in the wiring to the relays, there may be
fast current spikes during turn on.  I would be surprised if there was
enough cable involved.

The chips died, something killed them.
--=20
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