KILLED BY LIGHTNING.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 118, 28 January 1926, Page 5

KILLED BY LIGHTNING.

ONLY ONE IN A MILLION. 'Fear ot lightning is far out of proportion to the grounds for it, according to the revelations of a survey made hy Dr Arthur Gilbert, Massachusetts Commissioner of Agriculture (states the New York Times). This survey showed that the ohance of death hy lightning is only one in' more than a million. In the course of a five-year period in Massachusetts' only nineteen persons were killed by lightning, an average of 3.S persons per year. This is only one ten-thousandth of 1 per cent of the .population of the State. It figures out at hut one chance in 1,013,770 of a person’s being killed in the Bay Slate hy a bolt from the clouds. !The survey indicated that the man on the farm is ten and a half times as likely to be struck by lightning as his city brother, because of the scarcity in rural communities of steelframed buildings, trolley wires, etc., that in the city relieve much electrical tension while a thunderstorm is gathering. But Dr Gilbert assures farmers that if he is in a house properly equipped with lightning rods he is in greater danger than the city man. The farmer is 20,000 times safer from harm than a man dodging motor traffic in a large city.

'Dr Gilbert’s survey was made primarily to determine the extent of the damage to crops by thunderstorms. He found that whil-e these storms cause thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to crops at times, they aid agriculture much more than they harm it. The rainfall they bring saves large areas of products that would otherwise perish.