Deadly Lightning in Mexico Reveals Plight of Country's Poorest Citizens Nina Lakhani - The Guardian
go to original August 1, 2015

Lightning strikes San Salvador: Worldwide, lightning kills between 6,000 and 24,000 people worldwide each year. (Jose Cabezas/AFP)

It was mid-afternoon when a huge boom of thunder startled the Ramírez family as they tended their maize crops in the tiny mountainous community of El Encinal, in Mexico’s central state of Guanajuato.

The family, four adult sisters and their five children, sought shelter from the sudden torrential downpour under a squat mesquite tree – and it was there, as they covered their heads with flimsy sheets of plastic, that they were struck by lightning.

Three of the women and four children died in the lightning strike last Friday. The other two, an eight-year-old boy and 26-year-old woman survived with burns.

Mexico has the worst lightning death rate in the Americas with an average of 220 fatalities a year. The vast majority of victims are poor small scale farmers who have no access to safe sturdy buildings or hard topped vehicles during a storm, and are ignorant of the dangers posed by sheltering under trees and flimsy rain shelters.

Lightning kills between 6,000 and 24,000 people worldwide each year. Multiple deaths, like the case of the Ramírez family, attract media attention but 90% of cases are single deaths which are rarely reported, making them difficult to track.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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