Salima District Hospital last week received five family members who were admitted as victims of a lightning strike. The story was confirmed by Salima Police public relations officer Gift Chitowe who has since advised the general public to avoid standing under trees, leaning on electrical poles, standing on doorways and crossing rivers during thunderstorms.
The unfortunate coincidence of the lightning strike on the family members from Chimombo Village, T/A Kalonga, has aroused rumors of increasing witchcraft in the central lakeshore district of Malawi. It is not yet known if any of the members had any beefs with anyone in the area.
On Wikipedia, lightning is described as a sudden electrostatic discharge that occurs during an electrical storm. This discharge occurs between electrically charged regions of a cloud (called intra-cloud lightning or IC), between two clouds (CC lightning), or between a cloud and the ground (CG lightning).
Lightning strikes reach the ground on Earth as much as 8 million times per day or 100 times per second, according to the National Severe Storms Laboratory.
