Lightning Fatalities Since 1800

Abstract

Published lightning fatality data in terms of the rate per million people per year show similarities between (a) developed countries before the early twentieth century and (b) current lesser-developed nations. It is apparent that the reduction in manual, labor-intensive agriculture and the increasingly widespread availability of lightning-safe dwellings and vehicles since the early 1900s have been major factors leading to a huge reduction in the fatality rates in developed countries. Unfortunately, that has not yet taken place in lesser-developed countries and regions of the globe. In the developed countries of the United States, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, and Australia, the lightning fatality rate has now reached a level of less than 0.2 per million people per year. However, the rates continue to be very high in developing countries as evidenced by recent data that span the transition from the late twentieth into the twenty-first century. Recent examples of very high fatality totals in Southeast Asia and Africa are also described.