A person in Nemom dies in lightning

Mathrubhumi newspaper of April 10, 2015, reported an incident in Nemom, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala State, in which a woman who was taking bath was killed in a lightning accident. A team from LARC visited the site and studied the accident.

The team concluded that a poovarasu (പൂവരശു) tree that is near the house was hit by lightning. The lady who was having a bath got hit by the heavy current generated by a phenomenon known as Ground Potential Rise (GPR). Some cracks also appeared on the wall. You can see in the below photograph the damage made to the tree due to lightning. The incident took place around 5:00 pm on 9/04/15. As she was bathing, the floor was wet which made easier for the current to flow by GPR. Her ear rings and chains melted due to the heating effect of the current flown through her body. One side of her body was blackened due to heavy current flow.

Chunks of gold recovered after gold ornaments the woman was wearing melted in the lightning current.

The പൂവരശു tree that was apparently hit by lightning.

The news report of the lightning accident in മാതൃഭൂമി newspaper dated April 10, 2015.

Lightning Damages House

The following report about a house being damaged by lightning appeared in the newspaper dated April 9, 2015. A team from LARC visited the site and studied the accident.

 

 

The team concluded that a coconut tree that is near the house was hit by lightning, the current jumped over to the house,  damaged the house and the electricity service line through a process known as flash over. An electric water pump socket and wiring installed on one side, away from the tree was damaged due to heavy current generated by a phenomenon known as Ground Potential Rise (GPR). As there was nobody in the house, there were no casualties.  One motor socket, one lamp point, and one rig lamp were damaged. The incident took place around 5:00 pm on 8/04/15. The engineers from LARC came to understand from the site that the lightning hit the coconut tree, and through flashover, got coupled to the power service line as well as the lamp on the terrace. As a result, the service line got damaged and place where the lamp was attached got burst burning the wirings of the lamp. Also due to GPR (Ground Potential Rise) the lightning got coupled through the wirings entering to the building causing damage to the sockets, switches, wirings and lamps. If they had installed a proper lightning protection system with surge protection devices this wouldn’t have happened. Some of the damages are shown below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A discussion program about “How to escape from Lightning” in Samoohyapadam on Doordarshan

Dr Sasikumar, Exceutive Director – LARC , had got a chance to participate in the program Samoohyapadam in Doordarshan. It was a discussion program regarding how to escape from lightning. Lots of questions were their and was explained beautifully. You can watch the program by clicking the below link. If you had liked it please subscribe the page for more videos