Safety Experts Fear Public’s Overconfidence After Decline in Deaths From Lightning

Most American schoolchildren learn about Benjamin Franklin’s lightning experiments, but not many know of Swedish scientist G. W. Richmann. His experience may be equally instructive, however.

Richmann was killed by lightning while trying to duplicate Franklin’s work in 1753, four years after the inventor and future statesman wrote of it.

It is overconfidence in the face of danger that weather safety experts are hoping to head off, as they released statistics showing that lightning deaths dropped sharply last year in the United States.

The 1986 lightning toll was 68 fatalities, well below the 97 deaths recorded in an average year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported.

Says Risk Not Diminished

“A below-average death toll should not diminish the danger of lightning in anyone’s mind,” said Richard E. Hallgren, director of the National Weather Service.

“It is the second highest weather killer in this country, and it strikes anywhere,” Hallgren said. Only floods claim more lives, on average.

The most common lightning victim last year was male and relatively young--males accounted for 53 of the fatalities, and the average age of people killed by lightning was 30.

Thirty of those killed were struck while in open fields or under trees, and another 24 victims were on the beach, ball field, golf course or fishing from a boat or shore.

“Lightning survival requires monitoring the weather and using common sense,” Hallgren said. “If you are caught outdoors in lightning, seek shelter in a large building or an all-metal automobile. By all means, don’t be a lightning rod by standing under a single tree or remaining in an open field or in a boat.”

Imbalance of Charges

Lightning occurs when the electrical charges in clouds and the ground become so different from one another that electricity begins to flow in order to restore balance.

The same phenomenon occurs with a common static discharge, when a spark jumps from the hand of someone who has just walked across a wool carpet, for example.

But when nature generates the discharge between cloud and ground, it can reach 100 million volts, burning a channel through the air as it seeks the easiest path.

Because air is a poor conductor of electricity, lightning follows objects that reach up from the ground--trees, power poles or people, for example. This is why a lightning rod can protect buildings, by seemingly attracting lightning that might do damage elsewhere.

Franklin had proposed an experiment with a lightning rod to attract a charge in the air and prove that lightning was, in fact, electricity. When Richmann tried it, lightning scored a direct hit on the rod being used by the Swede and killed him.