Lightning Fatalities in Europe (2001-2020)

Until now, studies on lightning fatalities have been available from a few individual countries but not for Europe as a whole. We here report on lightning strike fatalities in the period from 2001 to 2020 that happened across Europe, all of Turkey, the Caucasus countries (Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Georgia), based on reports from the European Severe Storms Database (ESWD). The ESWD records are based on publicly available data derived from local authorities, police and fire departments, newspapers, and news agencies, which are collected by ESSL and its partners.

In total, 1280 individual fatalities were recorded in the ESWD during this period. We report on the spatial distribution of fatalities, and the distribution of fatalities per age group and sex, whether the victims were at work or undertaking leisurely activities, and in which kind of landscape they were hit. Furthermore, we considered the circumstances that led to lightning fatalities that occur indoors.

We found that an average of 64 people are killed by lightning strikes every year, and that the majority (78%) are male. The countries with the highest rate of lightning fatalities per capita are Bulgaria (8.6 per million per year), Moldova (7.7), and Romania (5.8). The lowest rates are found in Belgium (0.1), Malta (0.1), and Portugal (0.1). The proportion of fatalities in work activities increases from Western to Southeastern Europe. When working, people are most typically killed when working on the fields while during leisure, people are most typically killed when hiking. Of the rare indoor fatalities (1.6%), a majority (11 of 15 known cases, 72%) were killed by fire and smoke that broke out after the lightning struck. Referring to the age of fatalities, people at the age of 10-19 have the biggest share of all age decennium with a peak at the age of 15 (33 fatalities). Divided by sex, male fatalities also show the biggest share in the age decade of 10-19, while female fatalities peak in the age decade of 50-59.