by Shane Henson — June 1, 2012—Most people know to get out of the water when there are hints of lightning, but, as the Lightning Protection Institute (LPI) and the Lightning Safety Alliance (LSA) are warning, water is not the only place where lightning strikes. The two nonprofit organizations are joining forces to launch a lightning safety initiative to provide educational resources for outdoor recreational facilities, because a significant percentage of lightning deaths and injuries occur in these settings, they say.
To prevent lightning-related deaths, the organizations’ “Safer Design for Safer Play” campaign features a new Web site that provides best practices for lightning safety and effective lightning protection measures for outdoor facilities such as theme parks, golf courses, playgrounds and sports stadiums. The Web site is an information warehouse that connects owners, operators, designers and patrons of recreational facilities with useful information about lightning, a deadly yet often underrated threat.
The “Safer Design for Safer Play” initiative dovetails with new efforts by the National Weather Service (NWS) to promote greater lightning safety at outdoor venues. The NWS has created a new “Lightning Safety Toolkit for Large Venues” that details the voluntary steps recreational facilities can adopt to better protect patrons from lightning threats in order to earn NWS recognition for a lightning safety program.
