A summer that promises to be hot is also likely to experience violent stormy episodes. A child has already been hospitalized after being struck by lightning in Languedoc in mid-July. Reminder of the dangers of this natural phenomenon.
More than a hundred people are victims of lightning each year in France. 10% of them die and many survivors have permanent and disabling sequelae. Beyond the psychological shock that all the survivors describe as “out of the ordinary”, electrification, ie the passage of current through the body, can have very serious consequences.
When a person is struck by lightning, most of the electricity passes over the surface of the body, in the form of a flashover arc. But the part that runs through the body causes heart problems, including heart rhythm disturbances, impaired consciousness and memory, or just severe internal burns.
Pain, even paralysis
The victim, if he is not unconscious, can also suffer from pain in the limbs or even paralysis which, most often, fortunately fades fairly quickly.
Another little known danger of lightning, it is not uncommon for it to throw the body violently, adding to the effects of electricity the brutality of a fall. Nor should the risk of being injured by a falling branch be minimized if you mistakenly take shelter under a tree.
In all cases, a victim of lightning is exposed to sleep or memory problems, symptoms which are similar to a form of reactive depression.
Hospitalization required
If you are not struck yourself, what to do in front of someone struck down? Nothing more than emergency measures in the face of a loss of consciousness (safety position and pulse check, as a priority). But even if the victim is conscious and claims to have no problem, it is in any case necessary for the victim of lightning to be hospitalized for a complete assessment because the effects of most of the internal lesions caused by lightning, especially if these are minimal, do not appear immediately.
And as often, the best advice remains prevention: it is important to know that in France lightning strikes generally occur:
– Outdoors, away from residential areas
– During sports or leisure activities and more rarely during professional activities such as agriculture or construction
– During the two stormiest months of the year, July and August, traditionally a holiday month
– In the geographical areas in which the most impacts on the ground are recorded, that is to the south of a line linking Bordeaux to Strasbourg.
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