Barbour County index. [volume] (Medicine Lodge, Kan.) 1880-current, 1881-09-08
THUNDERBOlTS.
The Frequency of Accidents by Light
ming and the Causes.

The Frequency of Accidents by Light
ming and the Causes.
Philadelphia Telegraph
So many accidents by lightning have
occurred this summer, that it might eb
supposed that people generally would
now begin to observe those plain and
obvious precautions which cannot safe
ly be disregarded in a thunder storm.
Yet we find little evidence of increased
care in this direction. People will
persist in watching the lightning from
open windows at which they sit, and
parents will persist in sending their
children out in the heaviest electric
storms of the season on errands of the
least Importance. The fatal results
which often ensue seem to convey no
lesson except to the few whom they
directly affect.
This ought not to be so. Every man,
woman or child in the country ought
to know better than to stand under a
high tree in a thunder storm. Scores
of persons who were alive last spring
would probably be alive now if they
had possessed this knowledge and act
ed upon it. And why cannot people be
made to understand that an open win
dow is not safe place from which to
watch the weather on such occasions
Every season it proves to be a post of
death all over the country, and yet
every year it seems to maintain its fas-
cination for new victims. Again, sew
eral of the most peculiarly distressing
accidents by lightning which have oc-
CURED during the present summer have
occurred to poor children engaged in
untimely outdoor errands for their eld-
ers.
Another important factor in the fire.
quency of lightning accidents is the
ignorance, or carelessness, which pre-
walls in the construction and adjust
ment of lightning rods. They are in
sulated when they ought not to be, and
the connection with the earth is apt to
be defective, if, indeed, the conductor
itself is not broken somewhere along
the side N the building. A house or
barn thus endangered instead of pro-
tected is struck by lightning and the
owner declares that lightning rods do
more hurt than good; and so they do if
not properly applied.
Not long since a government life
saving station on the New England
coast was struck by lightning. 1t was
situated near favOrite summer resort,
where there are many hotels with nu-
merous guests. The inmates, during
the height of the storm, solaced them
selves by the reflection that their
abOdes at least were well protected by
lightning rods.
But in fact, Oh the roof of one of the
largest hotels the conductor was parted
in more than one place, and on none of
the houses was the system of rods or
the mode of application that which is
most approved by modern science.
Yet within quarter of mile of
these hotels stands lighthouse, where
the proper system and method are ex-
plifed, and from which they might
readily be learned. 1t is protected by
lightning rod, constructed on scien-
tiic principles, ana put up in scien-
tiic manner. So, we believe, are all
our lighthouses, and also the buildings
of our colleges and institutions of
learning generally throughout the
country. But the arguments of the
wandering lightning rod man prevail
over the example of the wise, and
therefore such accidents as we have
mentioned continue to happen.