Lightning strikes in our ‘back yard’

The High Park Fire in Larimer county, Colorado has now destroyed more than 43,000 acres. making it the 3rd largest lightning damage wild fire in Colorado history. The fire is raging just a few miles away from our Boulder, CO headquarters and we’re obviously very sad about loss of a life, homes and beautiful Colorado wild life. According to the Larimer county Sherif the fire was started by lightning on Saturday. Apart from arson lightning is probably the most likely cause of wildfires. The changes in climate  that cause more droughts on one hand and more tornadoes and more lightning on the other hand predict that we can expect more lightning strikes cause big wildfires.

Protecting a forest might be theoretically possible but is obviously not feasible because of ‘cost’ and ‘looks’. For homes and buildings protection against lightning strikes and mitigation of the effects of lightning strikes are very well possible – but never mandatory. But a lot of fire do start with lightning strikes that set a building on fire. So this might be an area where communities in high risk areas might want to step up and coordinate efforts to protect against lightning damage and mitigate wildfire risks.

So for the time being we just want to thank all the people fighting the current fire and we feel for all those that lost their homes. It pains us and we feel bad we can’t protect the whole world against lightning damage.

Lightning Protection