1994 Dronka lightning strike
On 2 November 1994 a lightning strike ignited three diesel and aircraft fuel tanks belonging to the Egyptian Army strategic reserve near Dronka, Asyut Governorate. The flaming oil leaked from the tanks and was carried by floodwater into the village. More than 200 houses were destroyed and 469 people killed. Strike. On 2 November 1994, Asyut Governorate and other parts of Egypt were hit by a five-hour thunderstorm. A lightning strike hit a point of elevation at near Dronka, which was near a complex of eight oil tanks maintained by the Egyptian General Petroleum Corporation  as a strategic reserve for the Egyptian Army. The tanks were spaced around apart and three of them caught fire. Around of oil leaked from the tanks; there was no bund wall or any secondary confinement in place to contain the oil, which mixed with floodwaters that were being held back by a nearby railway line. The line collapsed, and the water and flaming oil washed into Dronka, a village of 10,000 people. Effects. Contemporary news reports suggested death tolls between 200 to over 500, possibly due to distinctions between those killed by flooding and those by fire. An Egyptian  Ministry of Health and Population report noted that 469 bodies were recovered from the village and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) considers this figure to be the death toll. A further 63 people were killed in Assiut and other areas from the effects of the storm. More than 200 houses in Dronka were destroyed and 20,000 residents of the village and surrounding area fled to Assiut. One of the tanks remained ablaze into the night as firefighters decided it was best to let it burn out; there were fears it could ignite some of the surviving five oil tanks. The  governor of Assiut declared a state of emergency due to the storm and lightning strike. The WMO attributes the death toll of 469 to the lightning strike and notes the disaster is the highest mortality event as a result of a lightning strike on record (dating back to 1873). The highest death toll directly caused by a single lightning strike is 21 people killed while sheltering in a hut in Zimbabwe in 1975.