Single lightning strike kills 16, injures 140 in Rwanda
Image credit: Richard Hurd (Flickr)
16 people have been killed and 140 injured after a lightning hit Seventh-Day Adventist church in Rwanda on Saturday, March 10, 2018.
The incident occurred in the town of Gihemvu in mountainous Nyaruguru District in the Southern Province, killing 14 victims on the spot. Two others died later from their injuries, local mayor Habitegeko Francois said.
Francois said that 140 people had been rushed to the hospital and district health centers.
"Doctors say that only three of them are in critical condition but they are getting better," he said.
According to the mayor, a similar accident took place on Friday, March 9 when lightning struck a group of 18 students, killing one of them.
The deadly church incident comes less than two weeks after the closure of more than 700 Rwandan churches for failing to comply with building regulations and for noise pollution, BBS reported.
Lightning strikes are frequent across mountainous Rwanda. In 2016, lightning killed 30 people, injured 61 and killed 48 livestock, the most recent year with full figures, according to Rwanda's Ministry of Disaster Management and Refugee Affairs.
Teo Blašković founded The Watchers in 2011 and edited it until 2026, covering seismic and volcanic activity, extreme weather, space weather and near-Earth objects. Articles on this page are his archive.
Published in the last 24 hours
- In September 1859, a solar storm lit up the night sky so brightly that gold miners in the Rocky Mountains woke up after midnight and started cooking breakfast, convinced the aurora glowing over their camp was the sunrise Epicenter
- A patch of warm Pacific water that could become the strongest El Niño in more than 70 years sits thousands of miles from any American town, yet it is already the main reason NOAA expects a wetter winter across the South and a milder one across the North
- A 19-year-old Nebraska teacher reportedly tied her pupils together with twine and led them to safety through a blizzard in January 1888 Epicenter
- NASA built the Opportunity rover to last 90 days on Mars, and Martian winds helped keep it alive for nearly 15 years by blowing dust off its solar panels, until a planet-wide dust storm in 2018 blocked sunlight and silenced the rover Epicenter
