Tragic Accident – Myth or Fact

Last Friday afternoon we had a young couple killed and 3 including their baby daughter critically injured by a lightning strike. When the storm started they took shelter in a bamboo and grass roofed sala on their rice paddies where they were working.

The story goes that the wife was using her mobile phone at the time of the strike and that is what the Thais are pointing the finger at. I don’t believe that for one minute, there is no scientific reason why a mobile would attract lightning other than bad karma.

Now for me, had the phone installation been a land line type then I’d place some credence in the phone thing. I was always told NOT to stand under a tree during thunder storms that they attract lightning and isn’t that what these sala’s emulate?

Thoughts!

According to snopes:

Although cell phones being struck by bolts from the sky would seem less likely, it can happen, although probably more as a function of the person using the phone's being the tallest thing around when lightning happened to flash rather than anything having to do with the phone itself. In September 1999, a sales executive in Sri Damansara, Kuala Lumpur, was struck dead by lightning while talking on his cellular phone. The victim, 30-year-old Khor Chean Kit, was felled by a bolt after waiting out a storm in a shop for an hour and, only after the downpour eased, walking to his car while making a call. The bolt flung him several yards, and he died on arrival at a nearby clinic.

Cell phones (and cordless portable phones) used indoors during electrical storms are perfectly safe because there is no wire through which the electrical discharge could travel. (The belief that lightning can "follow the radio waves" into a cell phone is completely unfounded.) And although some people feel cell phones pose a risk when used outdoors because lightning is attracted to metal, handsets generally contain insignificant amounts of metal.

and from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA): lightning is not attracted to people carrying mobile phones: “People are struck because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The wrong place is anywhere outside. The wrong time is anytime a thunderstorm is nearby.”2 The medical profession is well aware of the misinformation on this topic as pointed out by Cooper.3

And another:
We at the ESD Journal do not believe that cell phone can attract lightning. The concept of changing the flashover for a stroke that occurs due to the location of the victim is valid. The main thing to remember is “ Don’t be out in a lightning storm with or without a cell phone.”