Several of those firefighter still recovering tonight at Caldwell Memorial Hospital in Lenore. We're learning new details
about what happened this weekend when a number of firefighters were hurt from a lightning strike while trying to contain a wildfire
here in the northern part of Caldwell County. It is a moment Justin Winebar and 18 other
firefighters in Caldwell County most likely won't ever forget. A lightning strike near where the group was working to contain a four acre wildfire.
Narrator: Lightning is a phenomenon in nature that is as beautiful, powerful, and unpredictable,
as it is deadly. Every year there are roughly 30 million strikes within the U.S., with only
10 percent of those being cloud-to-ground. A typical strike lasts one-tenth of a second,
carries twenty thousand amps, fourteen million volts, and can reach ninety thousand degrees.
Lightning may reach ten miles out from a thunder-cell to strike the ground without warning, the
infamous bolt from the blue.
John Gookin: Sixty or seventy percent of lightning happens within the rain column that's underneath
the cloud. That means thirty or forty percent is outside of it.
News reporter: It is a remote area in the northern part of Caldwell County, where on
a mountain top, more than an hour hike from the main road, the group had been trying to
keep the fire from spreading. They heard some thunder forty-five minutes earlier in the
distance but the sky overhead was blue. And then it happened.
Firefighter: The only way to describe it is a light that was so bright it was blinding
and a noise like it would remind you of a percussion off of a firework but about a hundred
times louder being right in your ear.
Narrator: So what is lightning and how is it formed? Lightning is basically a huge form
of static discharge formed in storm cells by the movement of air currents, ice crystals,
and rain. The positive and negative charges form a polarized cloud which sets up an electrical
potential difference within the cloud and also between the cloud and the ground. Lightning
is the result of the discharge between these two differences.
John Gookin: There's this huge static buildup and then it discharges in a huge spark to
the earth that helps balance the electrical charges. So when a static pulse comes from
a cloud a bunch of different leaders come upward towards the downward leader, they actually
attract each other. One of those will connect the main, bright flash goes to that one
Narrator: Lightning has a jagged appearance due to leaders moving in random directions
in fifty meter intervals. Where lightning will strike is a game of probability and chance
but there are some rules of thumb of where you DON'T want to be; lightning tends to hit
sharp terrain features like mountaintops, trees in the open and bushes in the desert
that stick up higher than objects around it. Objects twice as high get four times the strikes.
As you can see, lightning strikes really do occur in these areas. And more alarming is
that they can strike in a random fashion almost anywhere else. There are several different
ways that lightning may strike an object. The most familiar is the direct strike which
is the typical bolt from the heavens but those strikes only make up three to five percent
of lightning fatalities. The next type is an upward leader, seen in the animation, and
counts for ten to fifteen percent of fatalities. Following that is the contact strike which
includes another fifteen to twenty-five percent. Next, is the side flash, which is responsible
for twenty to thirty percent of fatalities. Lastly are ground currents that make up forty
to fifty percent of lightning fatalities. Ground currents are dangerous because the
current created by the nearby strike will travel in the ground and then attempt to travel
through you! John Gookin: Ground current is the leading
cause of lightning related deaths and injuries. About half the people that die around the
world by lightning every year, die by the ground current. Lightning strikes, it hits
the ground then all this voltage is there that drives current, all these electrons go
into the ground, it's more highly concentrated right where it first strikes and it dissipates
across the ground. The difference in voltage is what drives amps of current across your
body. If you have one foot standing on the ground and there's one voltage here and the
other foot is standing on the ground over here, there's a different voltage there, especially
if your legs are really far apart there's going to be a greater difference there it
can drive enough current from that lightning strike to kill you. If your feet are closer
together there's a lot less difference between the voltages driving the electricity through
your body and so the ideal thing is just put your feet together.
Firefighter: I felt a lot of tingling from my waist down in my legs and my feet but then
it set in there were a lot of people hurt worse than I was and some people that were
laying on the ground and they were just screaming that they couldn't move their feet or their
legs.
News reporter: Eight firefighters were rushed to Caldwell Memorial Hospital with burns to
their legs and feet. Some had singed hair, the strike hit a snag, a stump twelve to fifteen
feet tall, and traveling through the trees root system cutting what appeared to be small
trenches in the ground to the firefighters nearby. And searing into their memory just
how dangerous lightning can be.
Narrator: A look at the fatality chart places, due to regional weather patterns, Florida
and Texas at the top of the list, while in the western states, even though lightning
activity is less, a high fatality rate exists due to higher outdoor activity levels. The
national average is forty fatalities a year and four hundred injuries. Lightning tends
to strike high elevations in a dry climate like that of the Rocky Mountains and humid climates,
such as the Appalachians, receive strikes in the lower elevations.
[thunder cracking and rain falling]
Narrator: Knowing when to get away from those areas lightning strikes is a key part of making
yourself a smaller target. Hearing thunder is your signal to start getting to a safer
area. Under optimum conditions, thunder can be heard up to ten miles away. And since sound
travels a mile in five seconds, you can time the flash to the sound and get a fair idea
how far away the storm is.
Narrator: Safety is a relative term here as there are no TRULY safe places in the outdoors
but you can get to SAFER places. Examples of safer areas are: depressions, dry ravines,
watch out for flash floods though, stands of timber to spread out the risk. If you have
access to a vehicle, get in, roll up the windows and don't touch anything metallic. The idea
here is that the lightning will flash over the metal skin and discharge into the ground.
A laboratory test was done to simulate a car getting struck by lightning. A brave electrical
engineer volunteered to stay in the car while a Tesla coil discharged three-quarters of
a million volts into the car. She reported no more than a slight tingling in her feet,
proving the theory works. This also works for aircraft. On average, every commercial
airliner is struck once a year. As shown by this incredible footage taken in Sydney and
also in Japan. NASA tested this in the early 80s by flying jets into the heart of storms
and the pilots reported NO catastrophic effects to the aircraft from the strikes. If it is
impractical to move during a lightning storm, wait it out in the lightning crouch position.
If you feel tingling or your hair stands up you are in a very high electrical field and
a strike is eminent, as in, within seconds, get into the crouch position
Tod Schimelpfenig: Lightning position is something we will do when we have no other options;
when we can't move to any better place, it may protect us a little bit from ground current.
So we insulate ourselves off the ground and you put your sleeping pad and you crouch down
onto that, making yourself as compact as possible, bringing in your legs together and wait out
the storm because it makes us small and because we're insulated because we know the ground
current is a common way to get injured. It's a good plan when you have no other options
to get to a better place
Narrator: If all the precautions you have taken fail, and you or someone else is struck,
you can expect a number of complications from the current transferred to the victim. Treatment
principals after a lightning strike first involve scene safety. Do everything in your
power to avoid further injury to survivors, rescuers, and the patient or patients. You
may not have the luxury of waiting for the storm to pass before treatment, do the best
you can.
Tod Schimelpfenig: People who are struck by lightning don't retain a charge. The charge
dissipates from us almost instantly. We can go up and touch that patient, start to take
care of them right away.
Narrator: Evaluation patient stability and decide, based on their stability, where that
patient needs to get to. Administer basic life support and be prepared for prolonged
rescue breathing. Treat those critical injuries first. Every patient needs a total body survey
for burns, trauma, and neurological damage, to name a few. Monitor the patients closely
afterwards for signs of cardiovascular, respiratory, or neurological collapse. Finally, evacuate
any patient obviously injured by lightning and be aware that some of the effects of a
lightning injury may not show up until sometime later.
Firefighter: It puts a different feeling in your heart, feeling that you want to get inside
and get to as much protection as possible.
News reporter: And we're hearing that a lot of firefighters here in Caldwell County are
visiting those injured firefighters over at the hospital in Lenore. They're all expected
to make a full recovery
Narrator: Ancient cultures proposed all sorts of reasons for the formation of lightning
and gave it the respect that it deserves. Today we know that lightning is a natural event
that has a scientific explanation, however, it still deserves all the respect the ancients
gave it and it behooves us to take a large drink from the cup of prudence when dealing
with it. The power, randomness, and the effects of lightning need to be taken into account
during your risk assessment and medevac plan. Remember, when you are chasing that fire born
of lightning, to appreciate the power that created it and choose the safest course of
action possible for you and your crew.