NYT... NEW DELHI — Farmers in India have been fervently awaiting this year’s monsoon season after two consecutive years of inadequate rains. But they were ill prepared for the lightning.
In what may be a record, lightning strikes that punctuated the season’s inaugural heavy rains killed more than 70 people in India on Tuesday and Wednesday, disaster management officials said. Some reports in the Indian news media put the toll at nearly 100.
Many of those fatally struck were agricultural workers and shepherds in open areas with little or no protection. An unspecified number were injured.
More than half the fatalities were in the northeastern state of Bihar, but many were hit in the neighboring states of Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand. Locals described the strikes as some of the worst they had ever seen.
Rakesh Kumar Singh, the leader of a farmer’s collective in Bihar, said in a telephone interview that he had been driving on Tuesday when the sky turned pitch dark and a lightning bolt hit a nearby tree, which erupted in flames.
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“It seemed at that moment as if two meteors had collided in the sky,” he said. “I had to shield my eyes with my hands.”
As lightning struck repeatedly, farmers ran for their lives, he said. Many are so poor that they live in thatched-roof huts, and Mr. Singh said the homes that were hit had caught fire.
“There is fear among the farmers that God knows from where this lightning will strike!” he said. “Nature has unleashed its fury on thousands of them, first as drought and now as lightning.”
Twelve people — half of them children — were killed in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous state. Ten were reported killed in Jharkhand.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who had been preoccupied with sweeping economic changes his government announced on Monday and the celebrations of International Yoga Day on Tuesday, expressed anguish about the lightning disaster.
“My thoughts & prayers are with those who lost their near & dear ones due to the lightning,” he wrote on his Twitter account. “May the injured recover quickly.”
Lightning strikes are common during the monsoon season, which lasts from June to October, but it is highly unusual for scores of people to be fatally struck in such a short period. Farmworkers and farm animals are often hit.
The National Crime Records Bureau, which classifies lightning strikes as a cause of accidental death, reported that 2,582 people were killed in India by lightning in 2014, the most recent year for which figures were available.
Lightning deaths in developed nations are, by contrast, extremely rare. In the United States, six deaths have been attributed to lightning so far in 2016, according to the National Weather Service.
The onset of the monsoon season has prompted tempered optimism that India may be spared a third straight year of drought. A recent study by the Indian Meteorological Department said the country might endure more frequent drought years in the future.
Rick Gladstone contributed reporting from New York.
Poster Comment:
You'd think by now we'd have an antenna system for collecting electrons from clouds and feeding them into power grids.
