CLAIRE KEETON, Johannesburg | Thursday
THE single lightning bolt that killed 13 people in South Africa this week was one of the deadliest strikes ever in a country prone to electrical storms and where poor housing offers little protection.
One family lost seven members when their thatch-roofed hut in a remote part of KwaZulu-Natal was struck around dusk on Tuesday.
The 13 deceased and 10 injured had taken shelter from a heavy thunderstorm when the hut in the hamlet of Mogadi was hit by lightning.
“South Africans are regularly killed by lightning but this sounds like one of the worst (strikes),” said electrical engineer Bruno Lagesse, who specialises in lightning patterns in South Africa.
The number of deaths per year from electrical storms is difficult to measure because not all incidents are reported, but the latest figures from 1996 revealed 180 lightning fatalities.
The threat to communities depends largely on two variables – their infrastructural development and geographic location.
In South Africa the rural poor, an estimated 12 million people, are most vulnerable to lightning since their rudimentary housing offers almost no protection.
The mud floors can easily be flooded and conduct electricity to the occupants while the thatched roofs quickly catch alight.
Just as people in developed urban areas are more protected from lightning than those in rural areas, lightning poses less of a threat in developed countries than in developing ones.
“If one took the number of lightning strikes in South Africa and transferred them to Germany there would not be a problem,” Lagesse said.
He said the highest concentration of electrical storms occur around the Drakensberg mountain range which runs through KwaZulu-Natal, stretching to the tiny kingdom of Swaziland.
The Drakensberg experiences about 13 lightning strikes per square kilometre every year compared to about 0.7 in the United Kingdom.
According to Colin Marran, from the Institution of Certificated, Mechanical and Electrical Engineers in Johannesburg, lightning will strike the highest point in a given area – making people, animals and buildings easy targets.
If it strikes a hut the whole hut may become charged and fire is a risk,” he said. Victims of lightning suffer electrocution or burns. – AFP
ZA*NOW
Lightning kills 14 in thatched hut January 31, 2001