Lethal lightning
Bangladesh has witnessed a record rise in the number of deaths from lightning strikes this year, and experts say it is linked to global warming and deforestation.
Until September 20, a total of 193 people were killed in lightning strikes, beating all previous annual figures that ranged from 51 to 136 between 2010 and 2015, according to the Department of Disaster Management.
The total death toll since 2010 is 828. However, the actual number of deaths from lightning strikes could be more as it had not been considered a natural disaster until recently and not recorded by the department, an official told The Daily Star.
The record of people getting injured in lightning strikes is not maintained either.
The government declared lightning as one of the natural disasters only earlier this year, said M Khalid Mahmood, director (planning and development) at the DDM.
The district administration, as per a standing order, provides Tk 20,000 to the families that have lost a member in lightning strike.
Gawher Nayeem Wahra, director of Disaster Management and Climate Change at Brac, said authorities appear grossly negligent to the growing danger from lightning strikes by not taking any measures to prevent deaths from the natural disaster.
“Compensating families of the deceased with several thousand taka is almost meaningless when the person is gone,” he said. There would be thousands getting injured by lightning strikes and many are suffering life-long consequences without any attention from the authorities, he added.
The average age of those killed is 35, earning members of families and those families face dire consequences, said Nayeem Wahra.
WHY MORE DEATHS?
Scientists say that lightning -- caused by collision between charged water particles -- mostly occurs inside clouds, but in 20 to 30 percent cases lightning strikes the ground, said Prof AMM Amanat Ullah Khan of geography and environment department at Dhaka University.
He said as the world temperature was rising, it was causing more water vapour and cloud, and with more clouds come more lightning strikes.
His statement could be substantiated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports since 1990 which says global surface temperatures had warmed at a rate of about 0.15°C per decade.
Prof Colin Price, a lightning and climate researcher at Tel Aviv University, said climate models show about 10 percent increase in lightning for every one degree of warming, according to a BBC report.
Amanat Ullah Khan said the people working under the open sky were mostly to be killed in lightning strikes.
There might be a link between higher number of deaths and absence of tall trees like palms and coconuts that could take the hit, he said.
The professor negated the suggestion that more electric poles or mobile phone towers installed in the country were factors behind increased lightning strikes.
“If this is to be true, then the theory that tall trees absorb lightning strikes is wrong,” Amanat Ullah said.
Mobile phones or any metals held by the people under open sky may be a factor for death in lightning as such things attract electricity, but whether this has happened to the people killed in lightning in the country is still a matter of research, said M Khalid Mahmood of the DDM.
He said fatalities in lightning strikes happen in the rural areas, which suggests that the victims were either under the open sky or their houses did not have any lightning rods.
The local government has to work with the departments of meteorology and disaster management to educate people in this regard, Amanat Ullah said.
WHAT TO DO?
Disaster management experts said the most important thing that the authorities need to do is to educate people so that they do not stay under the open sky when there are clouds and risks of lightning. They need to remain indoors.
The next thing is to have policies so that all houses have lighting rods installed.
The rods would have to be installed on top of the buildings and those are attached to thick conducting cables going directly into the ground, said Amanat Ullah Khan, he added.
“Buildings in the cities mostly have such arrangements, but not in rural areas,” he said.
Brac's Gawher Nayeem Wahra stressed the need for more forestation as a natural way of preventing deaths from lightning strikes and mitigating global warming.
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