Natural Hazards Observer
| May 2006 | Volume XXX | Number 5 |
Lightning Safety: An Issue with
International Significance 
Each year, lightning is responsible for an estimated 24,000 deaths and 240,000 injuries worldwide. Protecting people and facilities from lightning is a global issue that requires more attention and education, especially in lesser-developed nations where villagers, farmers, and rural school children lack a sufficient understanding of the threat posed by lightning. Teaching lightning safety should be fundamental to every community’s public safety education efforts. How to react when one hears thunder or sees lightning should be common knowledge: e.g., avoid isolated trees, water, proximity to metal objects, and elevated or open spaces and structures; seek low ground or shelter in an enclosed building. Such public knowledge can reduce deaths and injuries.
For several years, the National Lightning Safety Institute (NLSI) in Louisville, Colorado, has exported its methodologies and practices overseas. Lightning research centers and lightning awareness centers have been established in several countries to mitigate the hazard. Groups in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Bhutan are communicating lightning safety messages to their communities through targeted meetings, public speaking engagements, media cooperation, printed materials, and more. The South Asian Lightning Awareness Program, a joint effort by institutions in these three countries, was developed to provide the general public and the engineering community in the region with much needed awareness and expertise on lightning safety to protect individuals and limit damage to property, both public and private, and minimize potential economic disruption.
Similar work is being conducted in East Africa through the Pan-African Lightning Protection Agency. While the importance of lightning safety does seem to be slowly gaining international recognition, there is much still to be done. Areas of urgent need include India, China, the Middle East, and West Africa. For more information about the NLSI’s International Lightning Safety Initiative, contact Richard Kithil Jr., National Lightning Safety Institute, 891 North Hoover Avenue, Louisville, CO 80027; (303) 666-8817; e-mail: rkithil@lightningsafety.com; www.lightningsafety.com/nlsi_history/intl_safety_initiative.html.
New Presidential Disaster Declaration Web Site
Created by the University of Delaware with funding from the Public Entity Risk Institute (PERI), the PERI Presidential Disaster Declaration Site is a free online resource that provides information about presidential disaster declarations made between 1981 and 2003 to help communities better understand their exposure to various types of natural and human-caused disasters. The site will be continuously updated and by this time next year should incorporate all declarations made between 1953 and 2006.
The site allows users to search and access information about presidential declarations of major disasters and emergencies in any state, county, or territory within the United States. Searches can be refined to focus on specific time periods or types of disaster declarations. Features also include the ability to examine disaster requests that were turned down, a utility for users to create their own summary tables, links to summary data, and links to useful sites for disaster information and emergency management.
Although the data compiled and used on the site comes from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), much of the information is not currently available on FEMA Web sites. Take a tour of U.S. disaster history by visiting the PERI Presidential Disaster Declaration Web site at www.peripresdecusa.org/. Direct questions about the site’s content to Richard Sylves, Department of Political Science and International Relations, University of Delaware, Newark, DE 19716; (302) 831-1943; e-mail: sylves@udel.edu.
Certification in Disaster Medicine Responds to Growing Need
Recent events have exposed a nationwide shortage of physicians appropriately trained to respond to disasters. To address this issue, the American Board of Physician Specialists established the American Board of Disaster Medicine to foster, coordinate, build, and facilitate partnerships between disaster medicine specialists and all levels of government and the private sector.
Physicians from a range of backgrounds are needed to enable comprehensive response when disaster strikes. The board will begin accepting applications on May 1, 2006, and plans to administer the first examination in the fall of 2006. For more information, visit www.abpsga.org/certification/disaster_medicine/index.html or contact William Carbone, American Association of Physician Specialists; e-mail: wcarbone@aapsga.org.