More terror from the skies:
From alertnet.org:
Lightning strikes kill 82 in China
14 Jul 2006 01:53:44 GMT
BEIJING, July 14 (Reuters) - Lightning strikes killed 82 people across China in June, a Chinese newspaper reported on Friday after several nights of violent storms in the capital, Beijing.
The death toll was recorded across 20 provinces, with 22 people killed in the eastern province of Jiangsu alone, the International Business Daily said.
It said the death toll marked an increase on June 2005, but did got give figures.
"The main reasons for the deaths are the lack of lightning avoidance measures, equipment and knowledge," the International Business Daily said. It did not elaborate.
Heavy summer storms have battered wide swaths of China this year, with meteorological disasters killing at least 349 people and causing economic losses of about $2.53 billion in June, Xinhua reported.
The capital has been hit by severe electrical storms for successive nights, cutting power to several hundred households.
A tropical storm which caused several deaths in the Philippines swept across northern Taiwan overnight, causing mudslides, and was bearing down on the coastal Chinese province of Fujian where thousands have been evacuated in its path.
But Tropical Storm Bilis was never upgraded into a typhoon and is expected to weaken once it makes landfall.
The Taiwan port of Kaohsiung, shut down before the storm hit, has resumed operations,
From the UK's Daily Mail:
'Unluckiest woman in world'
struck by lightning four times
By LUKE SALKELD, Daily Mail
22:00pm 14th July 2006
Lightning, so the saying goes, never strikes twice.
But try telling that to Christine Moody.
For the 84-year-old claims to have been struck by lightning a shocking four times.
And now whenever a storm is brewing, she is forced to put on her wellington boots and take cover.
The retired accountant says she was first hit by lightning while sipping a cup of tea in 1980, and has since survived strikes at a funeral, in a high street and even while asleep in bed.
Yesterday Mrs Moody said: "Being struck by lightning is the most horrible feeling - it's terrifying.
"I feel very lucky to have survived but now I am very sensitive to electricity.
"I have to watch the weather forecast very closely but I know how to prepare myself now.
"The one in my bed was the worst. I woke with a start and I couldn't move."
A spokesman for William Hill said Mrs Moody, who has six grandchildren, was a contender for "unluckiest woman in the world".
Rupert Adams said: "You have got to be very unlucky to be struck by lightning once.
"Four times is incredible - the odds must be somewhere in the region of ten billion to one."
Now every time a storm breaks, Christine dons a pair of rubber-heeled shoes and takes shelter in her car, which is parked in a stone walled garage.
She believes the rubber tyres will protect her in the event of a lightning strike, and takes blankets and enough food to last the duration of the storm.
And she is too afraid to venture outside too often for fear of getting caught in a storm.
Her Mamma didn't raise no fools!
"I have hardly been out of the house since Christmas," she said.
Former accountant Mrs Moody says she was first struck by lightning in 1980 as she sat
by the window of a hotel in Newquay, Cornwall, with her late husband Harold.
I have to know: was she inside or outside the hotel? It has to be inside, or the fact that she was near a window wouldn't have been mentioned. This is not good.
The second strike happened as she waited outside a friend's funeral in Bath four years ago.
Mr Moody recalled: "I was just stepping up into the entrance of the crematorium when it happened. My body was suddenly paralysed and it was as if I went straight into shock.
"My husband knew what had happened and he took me straight home."
The third strike happened six months later as was standing in a street in her home town of Bath, Somerset.
She was struck again in December 2004
as she lay in bed, and now she is too afraid to venture outside for fear of getting caught in a storm.
Fortunately Mrs Moody has never been seriously injured by a lightning strike, and has never needed medical attention afterwards.
"All you can do is rest and build your strength back up," she said.
An average of three people are killed every year in Britain by lightning strikes, which average 30million volts.
Last week a schoolgirl was lucky to survive being hit by lightning as she lay in bed.
Karla Pope was trying to sleep through a thunderstorm when the bolt measuring one billion volts hit a TV aerial on the roof, blew a hole in the bedroom ceiling and struck her metal-framed bed. The 16-year-old suffered burns to her hands, which were touching the frame at the time, and head injuries caused by debris from the roof of her parents' house in Colerne, near Chippenham, Wiltshire.
The forked lightning bolt left a two-and-a-half foot hole in the ceiling before hitting Karla's metal bunk bed 3ft below.
Woe!
