I apologize in advance if I am wrong about this and I appear to be making light of a tragedy.
Growing up, it used to be that only baseball was delayed/cancelled by weather. Today, delays like last night have become common for outdoor sports at all levels. My question is this: is there any actual record of instances of anyone (player, coach, spectator, security, vendor, etc.) being struck by lightning inside an open structure (i.e. stadium)?
My hunch is that this has become common not because of any (statistically speaking) real danger but more from liability concerns in our overly-litigious society.
Can anyone verify or refute this? I’m just not sure that these delays are always necessary, and I hate that it deprived our guys of any home field advantage/atmosphere last night, not to mention the increased risk of injury, etc. that can come from having to warm up and stretch multiple times before playing.
Or… could you install a lightning rod to draw the lightning?
My wife worked with a lady that was struck by lightning and killed. She had just finished yard work outside and stayed outside to watch the storm. Her husband went inside to take a nap.
I know there are examples of lightening hitting stadiums and fields where people were knocked off their feet. I’ve had lightening strike near me on a golf course, it’s not a good experience.
Like all fatal lighting strikes it’s not super common but yes it has happened on more than one occasion where fans have been killed or injured severely by lightning
To answer your question, yes. Seems to be lots of instances in soccer. Here is
youtube clip of several instances of players getting hit. Not sure what final outcome
was for the individuals but it’s nothing to play around with to just play a game.
Ignore the danger of lightning in general at your peril. Ignore the potential for lightning in situations involving crowds of people and you open the possibility for a mass injury and causality situation. Lightning strikes stands with thousands of people or strikes the field of play and you have a situation with hundreds or thousands people involved. Should lightning strike a game there will not be enough first responders to deal with the medical emergency that would result.
UH can’t be sued for a lightning strike under any circumstances I can think of.
It’s just common sense.
I used to work construction. We had two lightning incidents. One was like that last incident in the video. We were working around a retention pond in a subdivision. I big bolt of lightning hit the pond. There were four guys within about 20 feet of the pond–it dropped them all. One guy is screaming that he is on fire. Another guy is rolling around holding his crotch. Went in one leg and down the other. Luckily, no serious injuries.
We poured concrete in thunderstorms all the time. We had another less obvious incident. My boss, and this was pure kharma, was holding the concrete chute at an angle (so he had to apply significant force to keep it in that direction). Loud crack. Boss screams. Releases the chute. It swings around and almost knocks me off the wall (I ducked just barely–much more agile in those days). Yea, kharma.
But I don’t mess around with lightning. Never. You can’t see it coming. It’s just there.
Thanks for all the responses. It was a genuine question. It seems it is more common than I realized, in which case the delays are absolutely appropriate. I had simply never heard of any actual instances and was wondering. Maybe I wrongly assumed that it would be the type of event that would be reported in the news when it did happen.
If you look at weather delays all around the country maybe you could call them common. I don’t think they are common when you look at them by location. Last time we had a delay like this was Lamar at home in 2016, I think.
I checked the night before. It stated that there was 40% rain from 3-4pm and then clear the rest of the day. Houston weather is just unpredictable sometimes.
Our Little League had a lightening detector and once lightening was detected within 30 miles we shut it down. I was told lightening can travel that far. On one occasion, the parents decided to wait it out in their cars in the parking lot and a bolt hit nearby. Multiple flat tires from it.
To be clear, I am fully aware of the danger of lightning strikes in an open area (swimming, golfing, etc.). My question was about strikes specifically inside stadiums, and it was answered.
Lightening - a drop in the level of the uterus during the last weeks of pregnancy as the head of the fetus engages in the pelvis.
Lightning - the occurrence of a natural electrical discharge of very short duration and high voltage between a cloud and the ground or within a cloud, accompanied by a bright flash and typically also thunder.
Is it a sport or just a profession for bad actors ?
I know very little about the sport, but do they use reply at all when the
officials make a penalty call ?
