Most lightning deaths in Bangladesh happen in the open: what farmers should know

In the last four days of April 2026 at least 28 people were reported killed by lightning in Bangladesh, 14 of them on 26 April alone, BBC Bangla reported on 30 April. The Bangladesh Meteorological Department counts 3,658 lightning deaths in the ten years from 2015 to 2025. After over fifty deaths in two days in 2016, the Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief declared lightning a national disaster.

Professor Dr M A Farukh of the Institute of Environmental Science and Disaster Management at Bangladesh Agricultural University told BBC Bangla that 87 percent of the country's lightning victims were in open spaces. "If you analyse the data of the past 20 years, you will see that every year lightning kills more than twice as many people as floods," he said, adding that ten years after the national-disaster declaration the government had yet to take adequate measures.

The environmental news outlet Mongabay reported in March 2024 that, according to the Department of Disaster Management, lightning killed 2,164 people in Bangladesh between 2011 and 2020. Those most at risk are rice farmers in open fields and fishers, and most deaths come in March, April and May, the kalbaishakhi (nor'wester) storm season. The government's response included planting around 5 million palm trees along roads, lightning arresters and shelters in open fields, and an early-warning toolkit built with NASA.

Lightning needs moisture, unstable air and an upward force. Inside a thunder cloud, colliding ice and water particles build up charge until it is released as a bolt. Researchers blame Bangladesh's geography: warm, humid air from the Bay of Bengal and the Indian Ocean meets cold air from the hills and the Himalayas to the north. Professor Farukh said high moisture over the Bay, heat and heatwaves were adding to thunderstorms that year.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention puts global lightning at about 6,000 strikes a minute, and about 90 percent of people struck survive. The air around a bolt heats to about 30,000 degrees Celsius and expands so suddenly that the shock wave is heard as thunder. In a dry thunderstorm, thunder comes without rain because the drops evaporate before reaching the ground.

That week a report of a family keeping watch all night over the body of a child killed by lightning, for fear it would be stolen, spread on social media. Bodies of lightning victims are stolen because of a superstition that they turn magnetic. Sohel Mahmud, former head of forensic medicine at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, had told BBC Bangla that a lightning victim's body is no different from that of anyone killed by electric shock.

Nor does lightning spare a place it has struck: the US National Weather Service says tall, pointed, isolated objects are hit again and again; the Empire State Building in New York is hit an average of 23 times a year.

Lightning current damages the nervous system and can stop the heart. Even a minor strike can cause headache, nausea, confusion and memory problems, and later sleep trouble, ringing in the ears or depression. Victims are treated like anyone who has had an electric shock:

• Restore breathing within minutes with artificial respiration.
• Keep the heart going with CPR and get the person to hospital without delay.
• Touching the person is safe: the human body does not store electricity, says the National Weather Service.

The National Weather Service says no outdoor place is safe in a thunderstorm, so at the sound of thunder reach a solid building. A storm usually lasts 40 minutes to an hour; stay indoors, in rubber shoes if going out is unavoidable. Anyone caught in a paddy field with no shelter in reach should crouch low on the toes with fingers in the ears, though the NWS notes crouching does not make anyone safe. Avoid tall trees, poles, metal and mobile towers; fishers should shelter under the boat's canopy. Indoors, avoid appliances, taps, concrete walls and windows.

Photo: Muhammadphoto / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Sources: BBC Bangla, Mongabay, US National Weather Service (NWS)