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LIGHTNING SAFETY INFORMATION
Lightning Safety in the Workplace
Under Australian Consumer law, all organizations have an obligation to undertake a duty of care towards their employees, and need to perform due diligence towards ensuring appropriate workplace safety.This may be as simple as:
- Providing a policy and procedure,
- Adopting the use of technology and administrative controls ,
- Education the workforce with regards to recognition of safe and unsafe situations, and
- Providing employees with an understanding and the knowledge to keep themselves safe.
Health and Safety on Western Australian workplaces is regulated by the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1984 (the OSH Act), and the Occupational Safety and Health Regulations 1996 (the OSH regulations) supported by codes of practice and guidance notes.
Under Section 19 (1) (a) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act, all employers have a duty of care to ensure, as far as practicable, that employees are not exposed to hazards in the workplace.
- Identifying hazards which may cause injury or harm to the health of a person;
- Assessing the risk of injury or harm occurring to a person if exposed to a hazard;
- Controlling the risk by introducing measures that eliminate/ reduce exposure to a hazard.
Lightning Management Plan
The role of the LMP is to proactively assess and then identify those lightning hazards that may impact operations involving;
- Personnel,
- Production,
- Plant.
Lightning Safety have an unprecedented level of experience (detailed resume available) assisting numerous high risk organizations deal with issues surrounding the development of their Lightning Management Plans (LMP).
Safe Working Procedure
Various workgroups will have their own unique level of exposure to lightning hazards, and some will have a much greater disposition to risk through the various lightning injury mechanisms, and who will benefit from workgroup specific Safe Working Procedures that cater to their particular normal work activities.
The objectives of the Safe Working Procedure is to;
- To ensure that specific activities are managed in a safe and efficient manner during electrical storms.
- Identify the responsibilities for all person(s) performing/ managing work activities.
- Define the standards to be applied for the management of operations during electrical storm events.
- To notify all personnel involved in high risk activities of impending weather conditions requiring safe actions
- To provide effective early warning and timely communication of lightning threat alert notifications.
- To communicate education and lightning risk information to all at risk groups
Lightning Safety can assist organizations with their understanding and development of their Safe Working Procedures.
(Copyright Lightning Safety Pty Ltd)
Lightning Safety vs’ Productivity
Lightning Safety have long held the view that those who are tasked to identify and document lightning risks within their organisations, often do so without the benefit of informed understanding, that whilst lightning may follow the technical rules of physics and electricity, its physics and behavior are in fact very different than what we are used to with ‘man made’ electricity’.
Lightning is a VERY different form of electricity, where our ‘common sense’ thoughts and extrapolations of our own electrical experience, are more often than not ‘wrong’ when it comes down to the behavior of lightning.
Yet there are many, who without the benefit of any technical understanding to even the most basic fundamentals of lightning, are too often left to undertake risk assessments and make decisions and determinations affecting safety and productivity , without any clear understanding of the actual risk exposures involved, or any useful understanding as to the most appropriate, and/or mitigation controls available.
This has too often resulted in a misguided acceptance that unplanned disruptions affecting high yield productivity are a normal consequence to the cost of doing business.
At Lightning Safety, we often take a differing view.
It has been our experience that in many instances, lost production and opportunity through unplanned disruptions, has been an unnecessary impost on operational profitability, given that more appropriate technology controls have too often been overlooked.
However where more appropriate controls where applied, this would not only ensure continuous operational productivity, but would also provide for significant improvements to operational safety, during high risk periods.
Our LightningMan ™ LightningMa-ST and LightningMa-SK safe productivity solutions offer significant opportunities for providing continuous productivity, whislt ensuring optimum safety to personnel during high risk conditions.
(Copyright Lightningman Pty Ltd)
Lightning Warning
& Detection Technology
IEC 62793-2016 – Protection against lightning: Thunderstorm Warning Systems, offers a useful reference to those looking for guidance on matters involving lightning threat detection.
This standard applies to the use of the data obtained from thunderstorm warning systems, and from atmospheric electrical activity, in order to establish threat and provide preventive measures.
There are four (4) classes of detection capability that are described;
- Class 1 detectors: detect storm activity during its whole life cycle (phases 1 to 4).
- Class 2 detectors: detect C-C and C-G lightning (phases 2 to 4).
- Class 3 detectors: detect only C-G lightning (phases 3 and 4).
- Class 4 detectors: detect C-G lightning (phase 3 with limited performance).
IEC 62793 distinguishes between the detection capability of each Class of detection technology, and then classifies these detection capability across four (4) storm phases, along with the type of discharges that can be measured.
These phases include:
- Phase 1: The electric field rises – Initial stage
- Phase 2: Intra – Cloud (I-C) and Cloud – Cloud (C-C) lightning – Growth phase
- Phase 3: Cloud – Cloud (C-C) and Cloud – Ground (C-G) lightning – Mature phase
- Phase 4: Number of lightning bolts decreases – Dissipation Phase
The most commonly applied lightning threat detection technologies as is used within higher risk industries involves ‘ historical’ threat detection (Class 2), whereby lightning must have already occured for it to be detected and then ranged.
True ‘Predictive’ threat warnings ‘prior’ to a lightning strike
True ‘Predictive’ threat warnings ‘prior’ to a lightning strike are also possible, and are also outlined within IEC 62793-2016- (Class 1) .
This involves changes in the local electric field that can be sensed and then measured during the “Initial” stage -Phase 1, where at the onset of localized thunderstorms, the local electric field will rise, and can be measured against a set of default E Field thresholds. The use of this E Field sensing can provide for several minutes of advanced warning, and well prior to any first lightning strike occurring.
Threat Ranging, Threat Assessment and Threat Notification
Organizations must determine and then standardize upon an appropriate set of distance based metrics, on which to base their determinations for safe, and unsafe conditions. These distance thresholds are then used as a trigger point for the commencement of safe procedures, but must be able to be pre-set within the Lightning Warning System. Lightning Safety can assist in the selection of appropriate metrics to suit the various activities that may be involved.
Safe Shelter
Having established that lightning conditions are local, all persons who may find themselves outdoors or otherwise exposed, should be directed to seek an immediate safe refuge indoors, or within some other designated safe shelter, and then wait for further instruction.
A recent significant lightning incident at a Queensland mining operation (Dec 2020) resulted in two (2) operators being injured by whilst inside a Crib Room, which would ordinarily be considered as being a safe shelter, although somewhere in the design phase, the pressure wave and blast radius of an exploding tyre explosion didn’t make it to risk assessment, despite similar lightning initiated tyre pyrolysis being a regular occurrence affecting the worldwide mining sector.
Lightning Safety can confirm that there are literally hundreds of similar workplaces that present similar exposure to risk.
Safe shelters will typically include:
- Permanent, substantial buildings.
- Fully enclosed all-metal vehicles.
- Designated metal shelters (specially designed).
- Building which are outside of the blast/ debris radius from explosions and pressure wave.
Other locations as identified by specialists or ES&H personnel.
Any structure designated as a safe shelter must be audited against a minimum set of guidelines, that once met, would allow a placard to be affixed to the structure, thereby identifying the structure as having met the minimum safe shelter requirements.
Ongoing Threat Assessment
Alert conditions may only be removed once 30 minutes after the last recorded lightning activity within the applicable distance. They must be removed in order of severity. That is, if a Red Alert has been declared, it must be downgraded to an Orange Alert, then a Yellow Alert before being completely removed. As each alert condition is removed the Warning System Operator shall notify all relevant supervisors that the alert condition has been changed. A positive confirmation from each supervisor must be obtained. Once a zone has been clear of lightning for 30 minutes the alert for that zone can be lifted. Once the alerts have been lifted, the incident should be entered into the records.
This must be done regardless of the alert status reached.
During alert conditions, only the supervisor of each area should contact the Warning System operator. All other personnel should direct queries regarding the current alert situation to their supervisor. Once the threat has diminished it should prompt the resumption of normal activities.
Decision to Resume Activities
Once the Lightning Monitoring technology has issued the all-clear, or where 30 minutes have elapsed since the last thunder is heard, only then can the “All Clear” be called where all personnel can resume their normal duties, albeit at heightened alert for the possibility of additional threat alerts.
(Copyright Lightningman Pty Ltd)
Lightning Risk Mechanisms
Most people will be unaware as to the actual means and incident statistics by which persons are injured by Lightning, yet there are actually seven (7) primary lightning injury mechanisms by which lightning related death and injury may occur.
Only 3-5% of all recent lightning statistics will have involved ‘direct’ strike’, where a person, or person’s will have been struck directly.
>95% of the recent statistics have resulted from ‘indirect’ lightning strikes, even involving lightning activity occuring up to several kilometers remote.
Lightning Safety Seminars
Lightning Safety are specialists in the technically niche area of Lightning Safety, and with a 25 year resume of significant Lightning Safety projects behind us, carried out across four (4) continents, such levels of demonstrated experience should confirm our status as an authoritative technical resource to all seeking guidance and assistance in this technically challenging area.
Lightning Safety has pioneered a greater lightning safety and risk awareness across Australia’s higher risk workplaces, having solely organized and hosted influential Lightning Safety Seminars nationally, and across several Australian states, that challenged Standards, Regulators and risk industries to come together and develop a common approach to dealing with lightning threats.
Our seminars were prompted by a spate of lightning related fatalities and injuries
Workplace safety being extended to include natural dangers like lightning, became a huge focus when several lightning strike incedences resulted in serious injury & death.
It was our view that had high risk industries a clearer understanding of Lightning and its various risk mechanisms, and that dealt with lightning risks in a common manner, a mitigation of lightning risk could be assured, as opposed to the then reality, where the aforementioned organizations dealt with their understanding of risk individually and in very different ways, that did not support any cohesive or structured approach, or that afforded any appropriate recognition of the hazard, whilst placing those workgroups undertaking higher risk activities at unnecessary levels of exposure as a consequence.
These seminars were extremely successful & very well attended, and attracted the attendance of many key stakeholders in workplace health & safety, including:
- Relevant Australian Standards Committees,
- Various State Industry Regulators,
- Various State Sporting Regulators,
- National Sporting Codes.High risk industry sectors including:
- Mining,
- Resources,
- Energy and Renewables,
- Power and Water Utilities,
- Telecommunications,
- Construction.
With many seminar participants later amending their organizations own Lightning Safety Procedures, to follow the Lightning Safety Framework outlined and proposed.
(Copyright Lightningman Pty Ltd)
