Lightning strikes, which account for the second highest number of deaths in meteorological disasters in India, are most difficult to forecast but efforts are on to take advantage of technology to inform people beforehand about such activity, Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) Bishnupada Sethi said.
Speaking at a conference at the SOA University here on Wednesday, Sethi said technology has now made it possible to predict the possibility of lightning strike at a particular place an hour before the occurrence and location based alert systems are being installed at different places in Odisha for the benefit of the people.
The conference was organised on the eve of a three-day ‘International Conference on Thunderstorm and Lightning in Tropics’ (ICTLT), jointly by Centre for Environment and Climate (CEC), SOA, and Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA), to be held from January 17 to 19.
Sethi, also Managing Director of OSDMA, said the ICTLT has been planned to improve understanding on lightning and thunderstorm in partnership with SOA. Several other organisations like the Earth Network of the USA, Bhubaneswar chapter of Indian Meteorological Society (IMS), Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology (IITM), Pune and RIMES, Bangkok are supporting the event, he said.
Prof Uma Charan Mohanty, Emeritus Professor, IIT, Bhubaneswar, Dr Sarat Chandra Sahu, Director, CEC, Dr Ajit Tyagi, former Director General of Indian Meteorological Department and Dr Manas Kumar Mallick, Director, SOA were present.
Prof Mohanty said the conference would provide an excellent platform to over 200 scientists, academicians, operational researchers, planners and stakeholders at different levels to discuss the issues involved.
The conference, Sethi said, would seek to address these issues and recommend measures for adaptation and mitigation of such extreme events for sustainable development.
Official statistics over the last five decades reveal that lightning caused around 3,000 deaths in the country annually accounting for about 39 per cent of all natural disasters. Of these, an average of 400 lightning related casualties occurred in Odisha alone.
Sethi said Mayurbhanj, Baleswar, Ganjam, Keonjhar, Cuttack, Sundargarh and Bhadrak are among the districts which registered the most number of lightning strikes and casualties.
Replying to a question, he said 122 alert systems have been installed along the Odisha coast.
