Following the May 22 tornado in Joplin, Mo., first responders braved lightning storms and other hazards to rescue survivors. One such responder was killed by a lightning strike after he returned to a command post. According to a report of the incident, he had just dropped off another responder when a bolt of lightning struck next to where he was standing. Nearby public safety officers performed CPR, and he was transported to a hospital where he passed away from his injuries June 3.
Conducting response operations in hazardous weather is a circumstance in which the benefits of the response must be weighed against the risk to the responders, said John Jensenius, a lightning safety specialist with the National Weather Service (NWS).
NWS data shows increased awareness about lightning leads to fewer fatalities. Over the past 30 years, an average of 55 people annually have been killed by lightning. In the last decade, the average has dropped to 39. Jensenius credits the National Weather Service’s lightning awareness campaign that began in 2001 for the change. “New rules are being established by sports organizations, by various other organizations, to get people to safe places when they hear thunder,” he said. “Now that they are in place, we definitely see that they are saving lives. So to the extent possible, we’d like emergency responders to try and follow those guidelines as well.”
The NWS does not test lightning detection systems, Jensenius said, so he couldn’t comment on how well they perform. But available systems range in sophistication from those that warn of the presence of lightning to networks that can pinpoint the location of thunderbolts and track the direction of the storm’s travel.
During the response to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill in 2010, St. Bernard Parish, La., deployed one of the latter, a collection of lightning sensors and a weather-tracking system from WeatherBug, called StreamerRT, to monitor lightning as responders worked to contain the oil and clean up beaches. Safety regulations required workers to seek shelter whenever lightning was within six miles of their location. Depending on where they were at, workers would seek shelter in a vehicle or building, or if they were on the water, they might return to a harbor or find a sheltered inlet.
“It had no impact on the actual performance of the workload,” said John Rahaim, deputy director of homeland security for St. Bernard Parish. “It was just advance warning and notification for lightning in the area.”
The parish conducted response operations out of three locations — Breton Sound Marina, Shell Beach and Delacroix — from which personnel monitored local weather and notified responders in the field of the lightning’s proximity and the direction it was moving.
When personnel at one of the command centers saw severe weather approaching, they alerted workers in the appropriate geographic areas. This enabled operations to continue in other parts of the parish that were not in immediate danger. When lightning approached within this range, St. Bernard sounded sirens and contacted boats via radio.
“Before, if you saw clouds coming up you would hear lightning or hear thunder and say, ‘OK, I see it over there, now which way is it moving?’” Rahaim said. “You wouldn’t really be able to tell exactly what path the storm was taking. With the WeatherBug sensor, you’re watching the screen and you could see which way it was traveling.”
The sensors also provided a more accurate reading than the traditional method of counting the seconds between a flash of lightning and the sound of thunder because of variations in how different people count seconds, he said.
According to Rahaim, 2,000 workers assisted clean up operations in the parish without injury due to lightning.
While lightning detection systems may provide increased situational awareness when added to a weather tracking system, data is inconclusive on whether such systems can contribute to greater safety.
