A lightning strike has killed six people and injured 10 after it caused a pavilion to collapse in eastern China, Jiangsu on Sunday, according to state media.
A severe thunderstorm hit Changzhou in Jiangsu province where lightning caused the building in Fangmaoshan park to collapse around 8.30pm, trapping 16 visitors who had sought shelter from the rain, state news agency Xinhua said.
A search and rescue operation was completed before midnight on Sunday night. 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.
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“Next step, relevant public facilities will be comprehensively inspected to ensure safety,” Xinhua said.
Changzhou Meteorological Station 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 and short-term heavy precipitation.
In China’s four-tier alert system, yellow is the third most severe.
Severe convective weather includes thunderstorms, short-term heavy precipitation, strong winds and hail featuring “rapid impact, strong intensity, and strong catastrophic potential”, according to China Meteorological Authority (CMA).
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.
The Ministry of Emergency Management forecast on August 5 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 August 9, 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.
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