Does Lightning Strike Twice?

They say that lightning never strikes the same place twice. Having once sat in an
observation tower up in Yosemite National Park watching multiple lightning bolts during a fierce thunder storm, I would be hard pressed to completely disagree with that.

I do know that no matter where lightning strikes the point of contact is going to suffer some damage. But, it often strikes in the same vicinity as a previous strike.

One of the reasons that might occur is that there might be something there that is
attracting the lightning from the sky to the ground. Whatever that factor is, such as
tall tree, the results are frequent gathering of lightning strikes in a particular area.

Where is lightning likely to strike in your community the next time? Well, I am not referring to real lightning. I am talking about the onset of a tragic event that nobody expects to happen. What I am talking about are those types of catastrophic events that do seem to be like a bolt of lightning out of nowhere.

No one predicts them and no one is ready for them. The same thing might be said about fires. Fire seldom strikes the same place twice. When it does it is usually ground for suspicion. You can continue the correlation to the idea that fires that occur close to each other might be telling you a story that you ought to be paying attention to. This article is
based on the fact that the fire prevention division ought to be paying attention to the census information and to the neighborhood configuration of the community. If you are going to have a whole bunch of lightning strikes I have a sneaking suspicion there could be some commonality among the factors that lead to those fires occurring in the
same proximity.

My initial interest in this came from a fire department that I work with dealing
with the clustering of structure fires associated with kitchen fires. If one looks at the end-of-year annual report and it says that you have a specific number of structure fires and a specific number of those were kitchen fires, that tells you something about the nature of the problem but it also requires another level of sophistication. Merely looking at the raw numbers is an indication of how fast something is occurring but does not
measure the trend or pattern as to why it is occurring.

That level of analysis should be a function of looking at those locations as they are distributed or concentrated throughout the community. The term that is used in the GIS world for this is called “hot spotting.” Hot spotting is nothing more than linking
incidents up to other incidents within a certain distance radius and forming some conclusions about the characteristics of that area that may be causing your problem.

Part of the strategy of a fire prevention division should be to look at the specific
distribution and concentration of its incidents on an annual basis. The more uniform the distribution the more that there is a degree of randomness to the event. A good example might be looking at a map of emergency medical service calls in a community. It is not
uncommon for that type of call to be fairly wide spread. However, once you start looking at specific areas of concentration of call workload the data often identifies the fact that there is a condition of that location that needs to be examined more closely.

Once again continuing with the EMS analogy the location of residential care facilities for the elderly often results in a tremendous amount of concentration of medical aid calls. Depending upon the nature of the local contract and the relationship with the ambulance authority, that may or may not be a problem.

But nonetheless it is an indication of trends and pattern. In the case of my friend he was able to identify exactly what was causing the problem and as a result he took action to resolve it. When you look at fire problems, this kind of trend analysis may be a part of
the overall strategy to introduce mitigation practices. If there is a particular area
in which a particular type of call occurs over and over again, that should become
the focus of future consideration for specific mitigation strategies. That mitigation would include but not necessarily be limited to such things as public education programs, targeted enforcement programs even surveillance and interviewing processes.

Over time this lightning strike phenomenon can be either reduced or at least more thoroughly understood.

If it cannot be reduced, there is a possibility that the operations division in the fire department needs to be considering additional resources.

This begins to play into such things as unit utilization and the need to have secondary equipment. Or, it can be reduced if they require the department enact memorandums
of agreement for other entities to reduce reliance on the emergency services division for events that are essentially non-emergency.

In essence, what I am saying is that if you have got lightning strikes that start to concentrate you ought to be putting up a lightning rod. This metaphor applies to the fact that you are unlikely to be able to prevent lightning from being discharged but you certainly can minimize its impact on the ground.

Reinforcement for this came to mind the other day when I was reading about an incident in Russia. Over 100 people died in a Russian nightclub as a result of a fire that swept the facility. Not unlike that proverbial lightning, I doubt anybody would have predicted that event would occur until after it had already transpired. It is amazing how hindsight
can be.

In this particular case, the fire official had been placed on indefinite leave. Not withstanding the fact that there is a totally different form of government in Russia as compared to this country, the reality is that whether the fire chief knew about the problem or not is ultimately going to be the target of the public’s wrath. When
these events occur, survivors and relatives of the victims alike are looking for a scapegoat and one of the first places to start searching is the top of the pyramid in a fire
department.

Fortunately for most of us, lightning doesn’t strike in our communities all that often. But, the catastrophic event that destroyed the Russian nightclub is not much different than the Station Nightclub in West Warwick, R.I.

Where are your lightning rods for these kinds of problems? What are the indications that lightning could strike resulting in an embarrassing scenario for the department and at
worst a career-ending event for the chief fire officer. One strategy to prevent this phenomena is to conduct a periodic review of your potential for a lightning strike.

The answer is found in the various factors that seem to be derived from many of these catastrophic fires. For example, in heavily crowded public assembly occupancies, fires occur periodically in entertainment venues in which there is very little oversight during the hours of operation.

Here is a question for you. Do you have any facilities within your community that meet that criterion? If you do, then perhaps you need to attach a lightning rod to that occupancy.

Workload analysis that is based upon reviewing the frequency, distribution and concentration of levels of activity is a logical extension of understanding
the risk assessment in a community.

This particular technique does not necessarily mean that you give up the more structured approach to inspecting occupancies in accordance with other policies and procedures.

The metaphorical lightning rod I am referring to is an inspection frequency that is focused on the prevention of such an occurrence. As a fire prevention professional, you should be paying very close attention to the conditions of your public assembly
occupancies, especially after hours and during periods of their most intense usage.

Granted, it takes a little bit more time and effort to go out and inspect these kinds of buildings rather than walking through them in broad daylight. That is the very thing that
needs to be considered. These types of occupancies might pass inspection during the daytime and be a potential threat at night.

Some fire departments have established nighttime inspections of these types of occupancies, especially in metropolitan areas. But, the fact is often ignored in organizations that are not quite metro sized at this point. For example, those cities that
have a population concentration of between 85,000 to 125,000 may have those types of scenarios occurring in their nighttime establishments and the fire prevention division not be totally aware of it.

I have talked about the fact that there is a function of graceful degradation that sits in place of almost all occupancies that once you inspect the building the minute you walk out the door it begins to deteriorate. I would carry that so far as to say that once you have compliance that graceful degradation begins to occur shortly after that also. The
reason for using this particular technique in conjunction with linear planning for code enforcement is the very idea that you may have some parts of your town in which conditions have not been brought into compliance and they need to be targeted and reduced to an absolute minimum if you wish to keep the remainder of your workload totally under control.