When walking in the rain, some of you might have had an irrational fear of being struck by lightning.
Except, is it really that irrational?
There’s a Chinese saying that goes, “where there’s a fire there’s smoke; without wind, there are no waves.” Essentially, it’s saying that there’s a cause for everything.
Case in point, such fear wouldn’t exist if there haven’t been freak accidents like this in real life.
Luckily for one man, he just narrowly missed being the victim of one freak accident.
Man Nearly Got Struck by Lightning
In an effort to take shelter from sudden rain, one man was lucky enough to have entered a park pavilion just as lightning struck a tree a few meters away from the pavilion.
The incident took place on Sunday (6 June) afternoon, around 1pm at Bishan-Ang Mo Kio park.
Speaking to Lianhe Wanbao, the 60-year-old man, Mr Huang, said that he had been preparing to rest at a corner of the park after finishing work in the afternoon. However, it started raining and thundering halfway through his walk.
“I saw that there was a pavilion not far from the pond in front of me, so I ran quickly to seek shelter under the pavilion.”
Unexpectedly, right as Mr Huang sat down on the bench, a loud thunder strike in the area close by gave him a fright.
When he looked up to check, he found that not even five meters away from him, the top of a 20-meter tall tree had caught fire. Both the tree branches and tree leaves were all burning in the fire.
“Turns out that the lightning had coincidentally struck the tree, causing the tree to catch fire and burn. Another passerby and I were both shocked by the sudden incident. We only remembered to take photos after we recovered ourselves.”
According to Mr Huang, the fire had continued for around 10 minutes. The fire was extinguished as the rain got heavier, but a thick layer of smoke continued to emit from the tree branches that had caught fire.
Mr Huang expressed his relief and happiness that he had already entered the pavilion at the time of the incident. “If I had been standing beneath that tree, I would definitely have been in a very dangerous situation,” said Mr Huang.
S’pore Has High Occurrence of Lightning Activity
Back in 2017, an article released by The Straits Times shed light on another name for Singapore: the “lightning capital”.
According to the article, Singapore has one of the highest occurrences of lightning activity in the world. The country reportedly experiences 168 thunderstorm days per year.
Thunderstorm days are otherwise known as days where thunder is heard over the island, and is used to give an indication of lightning activity.
The article came after a lightning strike incident on the East-West Line near Tanah Merah MRT station took place around 3.37pm on 20 November 2017. The incident caused a delay in service between Tanah Merah and Paya Lebar MRT stations after the train captain reported feeling unwell, and had to be taken to the hospital.
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