JP1.3 Lightning-Caused Deaths and Injuries in and Near Dwellings and Other Buildings (original) (raw)
Related papers
2012 International Conference on Lightning Protection (ICLP), 2012
This paper discusses various practical difficulties of implementing internationally and nationally recognized lightning protection standards on small shelters. In aiming to minimize human injuries and deaths due to lightning related accidents for people who take shelter in unprotected structures during thunderstorms, this study proposes out-of-the-box solutions that may save many lives in societies that cannot afford packages of total solution. However, the proposed protection schemes can be applied even in developed countries or wealthy societies where strategic problems such as remoteness of the sites of concern and practical solutions beyond the peripherals of standardized recommendations are demanded. It should be noted that these are last resort solutions rather than replacement for recommendations in international standards.
Environmental Risk Assessment and Remediation, 2017
This paper provides a comprehensive account of lightning related hazards to human beings both at general locations and at work. The injury mechanisms are analyzed from both engineering and medical perspectives with the view of determining the factors to be considered in risk assessment for minimizing adverse impacts of lightning from both direct and indirect effects. The paper provides practical approaches in evaluating the degree of risk of lightning related injury to humans at nearly any given location. The paper highlights many dependent and independent parameters in determining safety assessment schemes against lightning-related human hazard. It also emphasizes the need for development of human safety guidelines in addition to established lightning protection standards that focus on property and services. While most risk index parameters are valid globally, in some cases, there may be special regional or local factors that should be considered.
A Summary of Recent National-Scale Lightning Fatality Studies
Weather, Climate, and Society, 2016
There is a major difference in population-weighted lightning fatality rates between the lower fatality rates in developed countries and the higher fatality rates in developing countries. The large decrease in annual rates of population-weighted lightning fatalities in the United States is described over the last century. A similar large reduction in lightning fatality rates has occurred during recent years in Australia, Canada, Japan, and western Europe, where there has also been a change from a mainly rural agricultural society to a primarily urban society. An important accompanying aspect of the lower casualty rates has been the widespread availability of lightning-safe large buildings and fully enclosed metal-topped vehicles, as well as much greater awareness of the lightning threat, better medical treatment, and availability of real-time lightning information. However, lightning exposure for many people in lesser-developed countries is similar to that of a century ago in developed countries. The number of people living in these areas may be increasing in number, so the number of people killed by lightning may be increasing globally due to these socioeconomic factors. It can be difficult to locate national lightning fatality data because of their mainly obscure publication sources. The present paper synthesizes lightning fatality data from 23 published national-scale studies during periods ending in 1979 and later, and maps these fatality rates per million by continent.
Defining lightning-safe structures for all socio-economic communities
South African Journal of Science
Four levels of lightning-safe structures are defined based on the protection expected from various lightning injury mechanisms under thunderstorm conditions. This work, therefore, provides clarification for the long-standing issue of determining the most suitable recommendation for lightning safety in various socio-economic layers of society, especially in underprivileged communities. These globally uniform and consistent guidelines will help standard development committees, lightning safety seekers and donors of protection systems, state policy developers on disaster management, the insurance sector and industries that provide lightning protection, in determining the most appropriate lightning safety measures for a given target, based on the safety requirements, societal behaviour and affordability. Significance: Lightning safety module developers could confidently adopt the definition of safe structures provided here in their guidelines. The ambiguity on both indigenous and comme...
In the UK in the past 30 years (1987-2016), 58 people were known to have been killed by lightning, that is, on average, two people per year. The average annual risk of being struck and killed was one person in 33 million. If only the past ten years are considered, a period with fewer average lightning deaths, the risk was one person in 71 million. The likelihood of being killed by lightning is much less than it was a century ago when it was around one person in every two million per year. The current UK lightning risk is compared with USA risk. The risk of being killed by lightning in the UK differs by the activity being undertaken at the time. This paper groups activities into three broad types. During the past 30 years, work-related activities accounted for 15 per cent of all deaths, daily routine for 13 per cent, and outdoor leisure, recreation and sports pursuits for 72 per cent. Leisure walking on hills, mountains and cliff-tops together with participating in outdoor sports activities, notably cricket, fishing, football, golf, rugby and watersports, gave rise to around half of all leisure, recreation and sports activity deaths. The highest number of deaths occurred amongst the 20-29 year-age-range. Men accounted for 83 per cent of all lightning deaths reflecting the higher proportion of male participation in outdoor work-related activities and specific outdoor leisure activities (hill and mountain walking) and sports activities (cricket, fishing, football and golf). Sundays gave rise to 26 per cent of all deaths reflecting this is a day when large numbers of people participate in higher lightning risk leisure activities. The four months from May to August accounted for 80 per cent of all deaths. A specific study is conducted of the synoptic and weather situations during days when thunderstorms developed and resulted in deaths amongst people undertaking leisure walking activities. Overall, this paper highlights the factors that should help to lessen the risk of being killed by lightning in the future.
Journal of Applied Meteorology, 2005
A reduction by a factor of 10 in the population-weighted rate of lightning-caused deaths over the last century has been determined in several previous studies. The reasons have been attributed to a number of factors, but none have been quantified in detail with a large dataset. Several thousand lightning-caused deaths, injuries, and reports of property damage in the United States from 1891 to 1894 were analyzed manually from descriptions provided by an 1895 data source. A similar manual analysis was made of information in the NOAA publication Storm Data 100 yr later, from 1991 to 1994. Comparisons show that the decrease in lightning risk to people coincides with a shift in population from rural to urban regions. Major changes in the types of property damaged by lightning between the two periods 100 yr apart are also shown. In addition, the results identify significant shifts in the kinds of incidents in which people and objects are impacted by lightning. This information can help in the development of better guidelines for lightning safety and education.
Reducing Lightning Injuries Worldwide
Springer natural hazards, 2019
The Springer Natural Hazards series seeks to publish a broad portfolio of scientific books, aiming at researchers, students, and everyone interested in Natural Hazard research. The series includes peer-reviewed monographs, edited volumes, textbooks, and conference proceedings. It covers all categories of hazards such as atmospheric/ climatological/oceanographic hazards, storms, tsunamis, floods, avalanches, landslides, erosion, earthquakes, volcanoes, and welcomes book proposals on topics like risk assessment, risk management, and mitigation of hazards, and related subjects.
Lightning Injuries in an In-door Setting: A Case Report and Review of the Literature
Journal of environment pollution and human health, 2013
Lightning injuries are not an infrequent occurrence, but casuistic is mainly related to the outdoor environment. Lightning injuries are also becoming uncommon due to better safety measures in electrical power supplying; nevertheless we refer a very rare case of a fatality due to lightning occurring inside home. Full forensic expertise was made to the corpse of a Caucasian 46 year old male, who died inside his kitchen room due to electrical discharge transmitted via the chimney of the home, whose external part was shocked from a lightning. Macroscopic changes following the electrical shock and images from the scene were registered. Although less frequently nowadays, Albanian families nevertheless still use to some extent wood stoves for heating. Chimneys that are mainly handmade and non-professionally mounted have been imputed for carbon monoxide intoxication, but in rare unfortunate circumstances these chimneys might serve as electrical current transmitters, thus exposing users to very high risk. Lightning injuries transmitted via a rotten chimney whose external part is shocked from an electrical discharge, might quite well penetrate in their respective internal parts and get transmitted to humans in an indoor setting. Particular precautions are needed during mounting of chimneys that might serve as electricity transmitters, since casualties due to lightning in these circumstances are rare, but anyhow occurring.
Struck-by-lightning deaths in the United States
Journal of environmental health, 2005
The objective of the research reported here was to examine the epidemiologic characteristics of struck-by-lightning deaths. Using data from both the National Centers for Health Statistics (NCHS) multiple-cause-of-death tapes and the Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries (CFOI), which is maintained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the authors calculated numbers and annualized rates of lightning-related deaths for the United States. They used resident estimates from population microdata files maintained by the Census Bureau as the denominators. Work-related fatality rates were calculated with denominators derived from the Current Population Survey of employment data. Four illustrative investigative case reports of lightning-related deaths were contributed by the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator. It was found that a total of 374 struck-by-lightning deaths had occurred during 1995-2000 (an average annualized rate of 0.23 deaths per million persons). The majority of deaths...