Six people died and 10 were injured in eastern China on Sunday when a lightning strike triggered the collapse of a pavilion as the group sheltered from a severe storm.
Lightning struck the pavilion in Fangmaoshan park in Changzhou, Jiangsu province, at around 8.30pm, bringing down the structure and trapping the 16 visitors inside, state news agency Xinhua reported.
A search and rescue operation was completed before midnight on Sunday. Six people were pronounced dead on arrival at hospital a few hours later, while the other 10 were reported by local authorities to be stable by early Monday.
“Next step, relevant public facilities will be comprehensively inspected to ensure safety,” Xinhua said.
The Changzhou Meteorological Bureau issued a yellow alert for severe convective weather on Sunday evening, warning that parts of the city would experience thunder and lightning, thunderstorms and strong winds, hourly rainfall exceeding 20mm (0.79 inches) and short-term heavy downpours.
In China’s four-tier alert system, yellow is the third-highest level.
Severe convective weather includes thunderstorms, short-term heavy precipitation, strong winds and hail featuring “rapid impact, strong intensity, and strong catastrophic potential”, according to the China Meteorological Administration.
The weather authority said forecasting severe convective weather was like “using a big net to catch small fish”. Despite advances in forecasting technology, there remained bottlenecks in severe convective weather forecasting that required vigilance and progressive weather forecasts and warnings, it said.
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Shanghai hit by heatwave amid extreme weather in eastern China
Shanghai hit by heatwave amid extreme weather in eastern China
The Ministry of Emergency Management forecast last Monday that many parts of China were at a high risk of flood disasters and that “more extreme” strong convective weather would occur across large-scale areas in August.
On Friday, Xinhua published commentary urging improved resilience of city infrastructure to respond to weather disasters.
“Every extreme weather event warns us most directly and strongly: respecting nature, complying with nature and protecting nature are eternal issues for mankind,” the commentary said.
