ABC Science Online, Australia
09-20-06
Sports stadiums may focus lightning damage
Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery News
Large open-air stadiums could be severe weather death traps, says a US
meteorologist in a new study on lightning storms and sports stadiums.
Few people have been struck by lightning in stadiums and no US stadium has
suffered a direct tornado hit during a game.
But the University of Colorado scientist says stadiums are not immune to these
dangers and stadium managers can do something to prevent a calamity.
The most infamous case of a poorly handled lightning storm at a big stadium was
the 1998 Virginia Tech game at RKF Stadium in Washington DC, reports Joel
Gratz in the September issue of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological
Society.
Lightning struck and killed one woman and caused numerous injuries when
50,000 people panicked and raced chaotically to escape the stadium through
narrow tunnels.
The stadium's jammed tunnels left many people in the open without protection.
During the next 10 minutes there were 16 more lightning strikes within a mile of
the stadium, says Gratz.
What went wrong? Stadium managers had no plan, police and ushers were
unprepared to help people find cover, the stadium speaker system was
inadequate and there was no lightning evacuation plan, says Gratz.
Ironically, the reason there are no lightning plans is simple: the odds are
miniscule that lightning will strike in a stadium just when a game is under way,
Gratz says.
"Statistically it may not make a lot of sense to look into it," says Gratz. But then
again, he points out, odds are also very low of a terrorist attacks at any given
stadium, yet there are plans in place for that.
"Lightning is also one of those low-risk, but high-impact events."
You can't just activate your terrorist plan when a lightning storm approaches and
expect it to help, Gratz explains.
"Unlike a terrorist threat, moving people into the [carpark] or open field during an
electrical storm will probably hurt people," he says.
What's needed are evacuation plans that use the most lightning-protected places
inside a stadium, nearby buildings, as well as better monitoring of the
approaching weather by stadium officials, he says.
Spectators themselves can prevent trouble too by paying better attention to
severe weather warnings and acting on them, says meteorologist Professor
William Gallus of Iowa State University.
Gallus got a first-hand look at how tricky severe weather warnings and stadiums
can be when a tornado threatened the Jack Trice Stadium in Ames, Iowa last
November.
"When this tornado touched down it was 15 miles [24 kilometres] away, it was
live on TV," says Gallus.
"Tailgaters [in the stadium carpark] were watching it" on portable televisions, he
says.
Yet there was little comprehension among spectators or stadium officials that at
80 kilometres per hour, the tornado could potentially reach the stadium in just
minutes.
"This event could have been such a tragedy," says Gallus.
Fortunately, the tornado did not hit the stadium this time.
"People need to realise they need to take personal responsibility for their safety,"
he says.
There is, indeed, a certain tendency for spectators to put on blinkers, Gratz says.
"When you go into a stadium as a spectator people have weather information on
PDAs and cell phones, but no one is really going to notice with the bright lights
and game that there is an electrical storm 15 miles away."
Gratz admits he has fallen prey to this blindness. He was at a game at Denver's
Invesco Stadium when his father called his mobile phone and asked him why, if
he was such a knowledgeable weather person, was he sitting out in the open at a
stadium along with 50,000 other people when a nasty electrical storm was
closing in?
"It was fatherly wisdom," recalls Gratz. And it's exactly what got him interested in
whether stadium management was really prepared.