CURRENT EVENTS: Can lightning injure people taking baths or showers?

Can lightning injure people taking baths or showers during thunderstorms?

Although this devastating force of nature (which kills an average of 58 people a year) usually claims its victims from those who are caught outside during thunderstorms, lightning has injured (and even killed) those who were indoors. People talking on landline telephones have been hit, as have those who were standing in front of windows. Yet the electrical discharge mayhem doesn't end there. People doing the dishes, taking baths, and showers have also been harmed by bolts from the sky.

Lightning strikes into the ground near homes have

sent devastating jolts up pipes and into sinks and bathtubs. Metal pipes used in household plumbing provide effective conduits for the massive electrical charges released by even a single bolt.

Such injuries are relatively uncommon because one has to be doing dishes, bathing, or showering at the precise moment when a bolt hits. However, people have been injured in this fashion.

Falicity Wishkeno

In May 2008, 15-year-old Falicity Wishkeno of Topeka, Kansas, was hit by lightning while taking a shower. Said Wishkeno, "Right when I got in the shower, I heard the thunder hit. I saw this big, white light. I jumped out of the bathtub and collapsed. I had trouble breathing, and I couldn't feel my legs at all. I felt all this pain in my legs and my whole body."

Abbie Jackson

In November 2007, a bolt struck a teenager who was washing her hair at her home in Blandford, England.

Said Abbie Jackson of the event, "It hit my wrist and basically lit up my arm. The shower-head flew out of my hand."

In October 2006, a woman in Croatia was struck by lightning while brushing her teeth just as lightning struck a pipe outside the her home. Said Natasha Timarovic of her experience, "I had just put my mouth under the tap to rinse away the toothpaste when the lightning must have struck the building. I don't remember much after that, but I was later told that the lightning had traveled down the water pipe and struck me on the mouth, passing through my body. It was incredibly painful, I felt it pass through my torso and then I don't remember much at all."

In June 2001, Josephine Martine of Deal, England, was blown out of her bath tub by a lightning bolt. The mother of three, who had been soaking in her bath tub during a thunderstorm, was catapulted naked through the air by the force of the bolt, landing on the other side of her bathroom. Said Martine, "I felt a huge kick in my hand and knew straight away it was electricity. In a split second I saw the water rippling. The kick of the electric shock was so powerful I was sort of thrown out of the bath. It was scary, but it happened very quickly."

In August 1988, as Eleanor Loux of Exeter, Rhode Island, brushed her teeth at her bathroom sink, she saw a bolt of lightning leap from her toilet. The resulting ball of fire then bounced off walls and the ceiling in her bathroom until it dissipated. Surprisingly, Loux was not injured. Her bathroom, however, was another story. The ceiling was cracked and the bathtub had charred rings in it. A utility pole outside her home had been hit by lightning, which sent the resulting charge through neighborhood power lines and metal water pipes.