As we ap­proach the end of the hur­ri­cane sea­son, I was re­flect­ing on chang­ing weath­er pat­terns and specif­i­cal­ly con­tem­plat­ing light­ning strikes. Glob­al­ly, there are ap­prox­i­mate­ly 24,000 deaths due to light­ning strikes and triple this num­ber in light­ning-re­lat­ed in­juries.

For the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice es­ti­mates 30 deaths per year as­so­ci­at­ed with light­ning strikes, with two-thirds oc­cur­ring dur­ing recre­ation­al ac­tiv­i­ties. Holle, Cramer, Laing and Thomp­son, at the 2022 36th In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence on Light­ning Pro­tec­tion, re­port­ed that Ja­maica had 16 deaths re­lat­ed to light­ing strikes from 2005 to 2021 and 39 in­juries. Foot­ball was the on­ly sport re­port­ed to have had per­sons in­jured.

On Sep­tem­ber 20th, 2023, it was déjà vu as I read the Ja­maica Glean­er ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Light­ning strike sends sev­en to hos­pi­tal dur­ing d’Cup match”. Light­ning strike re­sult­ed in six play­ers and an as­sis­tant ref­er­ee be­ing tak­en to hos­pi­tal. Four years ear­li­er on Sep­tem­ber 16th 2019, the Glean­er head­line read “Foot­baller in hos­pi­tal af­ter light­ning strike in Wolmers, JC match”. Four boys were in­jured by light­ning strike to­wards the end of an In­ter-Sec­ondary School tour­na­ment.

Just one month lat­er, on Oc­to­ber 2nd 2019, an­oth­er school match was dis­rupt­ed by light­ning strike and an­oth­er school­boy tak­en to hos­pi­tal.

Whilst I could not find re­ports of ath­letes/spec­ta­tors be­ing struck by light­ning for any oth­er Caribbean is­lands in­di­cat­ing there are re­ports of light­ning strike with prop­er­ty dam­age.

In Ju­ly 2022, the Rug­by Amer­i­c­as North Re­gion­al Male Un­der-19 and Se­nior Women’s’ 12 tour­na­ment was held at the UWI Mona Bowl. One match was sus­pend­ed due to light­ning risk. An emer­gency ac­tion plan was in place and en­act­ed, but I nev­er thought we would have to stop a match due to light­ning risk giv­en the drought we were suf­fer­ing.

Af­ter this, I have been more ob­ser­vant and fre­quent­ly no­tice out­door sport train­ing and events pro­ceed­ing with min­i­mal re­gard for the pres­ence of thun­der and light­ning. Is it that coach­es, ath­letes, train­ers and event or­gan­is­ers are un­aware of the dan­gers and ex­ist­ing safe­ty guide­lines? Or is it that they sim­ply choose to ig­nore these and hope for the best?

Sport or­gan­i­sa­tions must have a light­ning pol­i­cy and ac­tion plan in place and ad­here to it. Coach­es, ath­letes, man­agers and event work­ers must be ful­ly ed­u­cat­ed on the pol­i­cy and ac­tion plan. We do not have to rein­vent the wheel. We sim­ply need to ap­ply and adapt ex­ist­ing in­ter­na­tion­al guide­lines to lo­cal cir­cum­stances. At a min­i­mum, the fol­low­ing items must be ad­dressed in light­ning pro­to­cols: who should mon­i­tor the weath­er and de­cide on sus­pen­sion or post­pone­ment; when should ac­tiv­i­ties be stopped and re­sumed; where should peo­ple go for safe­ty; and what should be done if some­one is struck by light­ning.

There must be a des­ig­nat­ed weath­er mar­shal with ac­cess to re­li­able weath­er da­ta and, if pos­si­ble, a lo­cal me­te­o­rol­o­gist. The des­ig­nat­ed per­son should be known to rel­e­vant per­son­nel, who must re­spect the de­ci­sions made. Match of­fi­cials, coach­es and play­ers in­volved in the game are not the most ap­pro­pri­ate mar­shals for an event. Schools must have a sport light­ning pol­i­cy to guide de­ci­sions re­gard­ing the par­tic­i­pa­tion of their team in a tour­na­ment.

The weath­er mar­shal is ex­pect­ed to mon­i­tor the weath­er re­ports. If a thun­der­storm is ap­proach­ing, the event should be post­poned de­pend­ing on the an­tic­i­pat­ed du­ra­tion of bad weath­er, or sus­pend­ed. If thun­der is heard or light­ning is seen, there should be an im­me­di­ate sus­pen­sion, and evac­u­a­tion to the des­ig­nat­ed shel­ter. The sus­pen­sion re­mains in ef­fect un­til 30 min­utes af­ter the very last sound of thun­der is heard or light­ning seen. If the light­ning is more than five nau­ti­cal miles (9.26 km) away from the venue and is con­tin­u­ing to move away, the event can be re­sumed. If you can hear thun­der, then the light­ning is near enough to be haz­ardous.

Des­ig­nat­ed shel­ters should be prop­er­ly en­closed struc­tures with ad­e­quate space to en­sure that per­sons can re­main far away from plumb­ing and elec­tri­cal wiring. Open tents, gaze­bos and re­fresh­ment stands are not ap­pro­pri­ate shel­ters for pro­tec­tion from light­ning strikes. For school tour­na­ments, there must be ac­cess to au­di­to­ri­ums/class­rooms or oth­er prop­er­ly en­closed spaces for both the home and vis­it­ing teams. The school bus can be used but it should not be the first op­tion.

In the un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion of a light­ning strike, af­fect­ed per­sons must be im­me­di­ate­ly tak­en to a safe space and first aid em­ployed un­til they can be tak­en to hos­pi­tal. All med­ical per­son­nel/first aiders des­ig­nat­ed for events must be ed­u­cat­ed on first aid pro­to­cols for light­ning strikes. The cli­mate is chang­ing but there are pat­terns that can be used to guide the sched­ul­ing of events to re­duce prob­a­bil­i­ty of dis­rup­tion from thun­der­storms. Let us not wait for deaths to oc­cur to re­think sched­ules and shape poli­cies.

Dr Sharmel­la Roopc­hand Mar­tin is a Se­nior Lec­tur­er in the Fac­ul­ty of Sport at UWI