This article brought to you by Prime Properties, The Real Estate Place
Article by Malia Dietz
Local fire departments througout the United States respond to an estimated average of 25,000 fires per year that were started by lightning. These fires cause over $450 million dollars in direct property damage per year.
Lightning-related fires are more common in June through August, during the late afternoon and evening. In addition to the fires reported to local fire departments, federal and state wildland firefighting agencies report an average of 9,000 wildland fires started by lightning. These fires tend to be larger than fires started by human causes. The average lightning-related fire burned 402 acres, nine times the average of 45 acres seen in human-caused wildland fires.
In addition to causing fires, lightning is dangerous on its own. An average of 29 people per year die as a result of lightning strikes. The most common locations for these deaths are outside or in an open area, but lighting can also hit your house. If you know your house has just been hit directly by lightning, call the fire department, even if you don’t see a fire. Fires from lightning can smolder for days.
Lightning is a naturally occurring electrostatic discharge during which two electrically charged regions in the atmosphere or ground temporarily equalize themselves, causing the instantaneous release of as much as one billion joules of energy. The rule of thumb is that every second that passes between the flash and the thunderclap represents one thousand feet of distance between you and the lightning. If you see a flash, start counting; if you count off five seconds before you hear the thunder, then the lightning was about one mile away.