Lightning Safety: Open Field Protection
When caught in an open field during a thunderstorm, the safest way to protect yourself from lightning is to adopt a specific posture.
Recommended Action
- Crouch on your toes: This is the recommended action. Get into a tight ball, squatting on the balls of your feet with your feet close together. Tuck your head down and put your hands over your ears.
Reasoning for Protection
The crouched position minimizes your height and the surface area making contact with the ground. This reduces the risk of being struck by lightning directly and also lessens the danger from ground currents spreading outwards from a nearby strike.
Why Other Options Are Unsafe
- Lie flat on the ground: This posture maximizes your contact with the ground, increasing the risk from potentially lethal ground currents.
- Take shelter under the nearest tree: Trees are tall objects that often attract lightning strikes. Standing or crouching under a tree puts you in immediate danger.
- Stand straight up: In an open field, standing tall makes you the highest point, significantly increasing the likelihood of a direct lightning strike.
The goal is to be as small a target as possible and minimize conductive contact with the earth when a lightning strike is imminent.
Important Questions from Natural Hazards
Depending on the moisture conditions and speed of mass movements shown in the diagram, identify the types of mass movements A, B, C and D
Velocity-------$\rightarrow$ Material Slow Moderate Fast Unconsolidated material B C A Rock D From the above table identify the type of mass movement
- A tsunami occurs 1000 km away from the shore in an ocean water depth of 6.25 km. The tsunami reaches the shore in about
- The velocity of a tsunami wave is dependent on
- Which one of the following events is caused by liquefaction?
