Innovative!

The government has started planting around 10 lakh palm trees across the country as parts of efforts to reduce the number of deaths from lightning strikes.

Usually when lightning strikes, it hits the top-most point in an area. The government believes the high trees would protect many lives and homes, said officials.

With the assistance of the agriculture department, the disaster management and relief ministry took the initiative to plant the trees across the country.

"We have started planting palm trees on both sides of the roads depending on the availability of space,” Shah Kamal, secretary of the disaster management and relief ministry, told The Daily Star yesterday.

The work is a part of the Test Relief (TR) and Food for Work (Kabikha) projects.

He said they started planting the trees on December 15 and hoped that all the trees would be planted by June.

Last year, Bangladesh witnessed a record rise in the number of deaths from lightning strikes.

Until September 20 last year, 193 people were killed in lightning strikes, beating all previous records. The number ranged between 51 and 136 from 2010 and 2015, according to the data of the Department of Disaster Management.

However, the total number of deaths from lightning strikes would be higher as many such deaths went unrecorded. It is because lightning was declared as one of the natural disasters only last year and before that there was no department to keep the records.

Also, there is no data of people getting injured in the incident.

While marking the “International Day for Disaster Reduction” on October 13 last year, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina put emphasis on planting palm trees massively, saying the trees would reduce loss of life and property from lightning strikes.

Secretary Kamal said following the PM's directives, the ministry officials had talked to experts and decided to plant palm trees across the country.

He also said the ministry had recommended that the public works ministry make it compulsory for all the buildings to have lightning resistant rods as a building code.

The rods would have to be installed on top of the buildings and those are attached to thick conducting cables. When the lightning strikes the rod, the current would pass on to the ground.

"The building code is now at the law ministry for vetting and once it is passed, the risks will be reduced,” he said.

Apart from this, he also said the government was planning to set up some towers in waterbodies like Tanguar Haor, Cholon Beel where there is no such big trees.

Every year, many people are being killed in lightning strikes in those places.

Mahbuba Nasreen, director of Institute of Disaster Management and Vulnerability Studies, said, "I cannot say whether it is scientifically right, but this is in practice here for a long time. Usually, lightning strikes the tallest trees."