Staying indoors during a lightning storm significantly reduces your risk of being struck. To enhance your safety when inside, you should avoid contact with water and stay away from wired electronics, as electricity can travel through these conductors.
Key Steps for Indoor Lightning Safety
Based on information from the wikiHow article "Avoiding Getting Hit by Lightning", here are key steps to take while indoors during a lightning storm:
- Avoid Water: Refrain from bathing, showering, or using sinks as much as possible. Lightning can travel through a building's plumbing.
- Stay Away from Wired Electronics: Turn off and stay away from wired electronic devices. Lightning can follow electrical wiring and phone lines into a building.
While primarily an external measure to protect the building, adding a lightning rod to your roof is also mentioned in the reference as a way to help protect against lightning strikes, which indirectly contributes to indoor safety by diverting strikes away from the structure itself.
Detailed Safety Measures
Taking specific precautions can help you minimize risks during a thunderstorm:
- Water is a Conductor: Water pipes can conduct electricity. This is why activities like bathing, showering, washing dishes, or doing laundry are discouraged during a storm. Wait until the storm has passed.
- Electrical and Phone Lines: Lightning can enter a structure through electrical lines, phone lines, and even the metal reinforcement in concrete. Avoid touching anything connected to these, such as corded phones, computers, TVs, and appliances. Unplugging devices before the storm hits is ideal, but avoid touching plugs during the storm. Cell phones and wireless devices are generally safe to use as long as they are not plugged into a power source.
- Lightning Rods Explained: Although not something you do while inside, a lightning rod system installed on a building's roof provides a path for lightning to safely reach the ground, protecting the structure and its occupants from direct strikes. This is a preventative measure for the building itself.
By following these guidelines derived from the wikiHow reference, you can increase your safety while taking shelter indoors during a lightning storm.
