On strike this summer
With electrical storms sparking alarms across region, safety officials say it's a year to remember
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HUDSON - To some residents, a proposal by the Villages at Quail Run board to install lightning rods in the condominium development seems a bit redundant. It's hard to imagine, they say, that the complex could become any more attractive to lightning than it is now.
There have been as many as five lightning strikes in the last three years at Quail Run, a tidy collection of clapboard-sided town houses perched on top of a large hill, said people who live there. It's easy to spot the units that have been hit - they're the ones with the new cedar shingles adorning a repaired dormer or the peak of a garage roof, sites that the lightning seems to prefer.
"We're just about the highest spot in town, so I guess we're in a good position to get hit," said Dick
"I think it's because we're up here closer to the gods," said another resident, who declined to give his name. "And they seem to be pretty angry."
Public safety officials from around the region say they can't remember a year when they've seen so much lightning, or when their resources have been so stretched by the property damage, the tripped commercial fire alarms, and even injuries caused by electrical storms.
"They just seem to be more severe this year - and they're hitting things," Hudson Deputy Fire Chief Dan Connor said.
During the July 2 storm, Connor said, Hudson firefighters also responded to a second strike at Quail Run, at 2B Strawberry Lane, about 150 yards from Rouse's unit. Meanwhile, more members of the town's small department - there are usually only eight firefighters on duty during any shift - were providing mutual aid to Marlborough firefighters battling a lightning-sparked blaze in a large two-story house on Barnard Road. The storm even hampered efforts to fight the fire; firefighters working on the roof were ordered off because the lightning was deemed too much of a hazard, Connor said.
The deputy chief said it costs the Hudson department approximately $500 in fuel, paperwork, and other associated costs to answer a single lightning call. That cost jumps, he said, when extra firefighters are called in to duty.
And it's not just small departments that are getting stretched. Needham Fire Chief Paul Buckley said last week that because lightning wreaks havoc with commercial and industrial alarm systems, his crews may answer as many as 10 false alerts during a given storm. That means lightning storms tend to pull Needham's firefighting resources toward the heavily commercial south side of town, leaving residential areas with less protection.
"Historically, we know that the majority of these calls are false, but there's nothing we can do about it," Buckley said. "They have to be checked out."
In human terms, the worst strike this year took place on July 20 in Dorchester, when 10 people huddled under a tree in Franklin Park were hit and had to be hospitalized. But there have been hits and near-misses all around the Boston area, including several in the western suburbs.
Just three days after the Dorchester strike, a lightning storm moving through Hopkinton sent two men to the hospital. One, a 20-year-old college football player, was sitting at his computer when lightning energized the home's electrical system and hit him with a surge that knocked him out of his chair.
A short distance away, a 48-year-old man was holding an extension cord when a lightning-related surge hit near his Hopkinton home, according to local fire officials. Both victims declined to be interviewed about their experiences.
In Wellesley, a woman nearly lost her home from a bolt of lightning that hit her neighbor's yard.
The woman, who asked not to be identified, said she was away on vacation last month when lightning hit a tree house in the adjacent yard. The electrical charge surged down into the tree's roots, then jumped to her underground lawn sprinkler system and followed the pipes into her basement, where it shorted out the sprinklers' electronic control box. The box caught fire and fell over, sparking a fire on some storage shelves.
The charge also knocked out her hard-wired smoke-alarm system as well as her home security system. Luckily, a guest in the house smelled the smoke, and was able to summon the Fire Department before the flames made their way out of the basement.
"The fire could have burned for a long time before anyone knew," she said.
According to weather statistics, the widespread perception that this has been a bad season for thunderstorms appears to be especially true when compared with last year, although beyond that, the numbers, like the skies, are somewhat murky.
According to the National Weather Service and the National Climatic Data Center, there were nine days of thunderstorm activity in the period from June 1 to Aug. 31 last year. There were 12 days with thunderstorms over the same period in 2006, 11 such days in 2005, and 7 days in 2004.
This year, by contrast, there have been 18 days of thunderstorms since June 1, and August is barely half over.
Meanwhile, records from a Tucson-based company that makes lightning-monitoring equipment show approximately 17,400 lightning flashes were detected in Middlesex, Norfolk, and Worcester counties between June 1 and the first week of August. In the same period last year, 11,600 flashes were detected by the Vaisala Corp.'s equipment, according to a company spokeswoman.
However, Vaisala's records also show that there were actually more lightning flashes detected overall in the two prior years - 22,200 in 2006 and 19,100 in 2005 - than there have been so far this year.
For some reason, though, more lightning seems to be coming down through the atmosphere and striking the ground, increasingly concerned officials say.
The stretch of unusually charged weather has prompted both state and local officials to issue public warnings about lightning safety, including a recent advisory from the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency. In addition to common sense measures during electrical storms, like staying away from trees and finding shelter - "when thunder roars, go indoors," the advisory states - officials are also warning of dangers that many people might not know about.
In particular, safety officials are warning that anything metal or electrical inside the home - plumbing fixtures, corded phones, computers, and appliances, for example - can be a hazard. During a storm, the MEMA advisory said, people should shut off air conditioners, avoid bathing, and use only cordless or cellular phones.
Virginia Fullam, who lives at 2B Strawberry Lane in the Hudson complex, said she found out the hard way exactly how damaging lightning can be inside the home. Although she was away when the July 2 storm hit her unit, the resulting power surge destroyed her television, stereo, answering machine, telephone, and the printer and modem for her computer.
A new member of the condo complex's facilities committee, the 75-year-old Fullam said she is convinced that it is time to protect residents from further harm by installing lightning rods, which attract and then safely channel the energy from lightning strikes.
"There have been so many lately and we don't know why. I think we need some lightning rods up here," she said. "We definitely need something."
