Ghasts firing at a portal can deactivate it, potentially trapping someone in the nether

We had an interesting experience today! We have a portal on our multiplayer server to the nether, and some un-scrupulous person took out a few blocks of our portal room - a ghast then fired at me through the hole, hitting the portal! The portal was deactivated, and no more purply goobly doorway for me. I happened to not have any iron on me at the moment.. I didn't want to have to suicide and lose all my stuff!

Anyway, a friendly server denizen offered to relight it, but it was still active on the other side! He went through it anndd... it created a new portal 6 spaces away from the original facing a different direction.

Apologies if as designed, hopefully someone at least gets a chuckle out of this.