Last week’s death of a Buffalo Grove youth baseball coach who was hit by lightning has focused new attention on technology’s ability to warn people at recreational areas about potential lightning strikes.
But even though warning systems have been installed by more than a dozen Chicago-area park districts and golf courses at a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, experts are skeptical about relying on them. And they say there is no substitute for common sense.
Some suggest the money spent on elaborate warning devices might be better spent educating the public and buying inexpensive radios that can relay weather information.
“Protection from lightning is really a combination of safety rules and common sense and being willing to be inconvenienced,” said John Jensenius, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, Maine.
“Nothing is fail-safe. Personally, I would not rely on any one device.”
On June 3, Daniel Rice, 47, coach of a team of 10- to 12-year-old boys in the Buffalo Grove Recreation Association, and Martin Magida, the coach of another team, were on a baseball diamond at Cooper Middle School deciding whether to play immediately after a storm.
As players and parents waited in cars nearby, a lightning bolt knocked both men to the ground. A shaken Magida was able to get up and walk away. Rice went into cardiac arrest and died two days later.
Experts say lightning can strike either before or after a thunderstorm, from up to 10 miles away.
“People truly don’t understand all the dangers associated with thunderstorms and lightning,” Jensenius said.
Buffalo Grove officials are once again taking up the issue of installing warning devices at parks and schoolyards.
Twice in the last two years, Park District voters have rejected proposals that included purchasing detection systems.
The amount earmarked for the devices, more than $100,000, was a small portion of a $20 million package to improve park facilities.
Michael Rylko, director of the Buffalo Grove Park District, said the topic of acquiring a warning system has been placed on the board’s upcoming agenda.
`Not an end in itself’
The warning equipment would be acquired as “a supplement to safety and common sense, not an end in itself,” Rylko said.
One system Rylko said the district might consider purchasing is used by at least 15 Chicago-area park districts and golf courses.
The system, manufactured by Thor Guard Inc., a Florida company, is promoted as a lightning “predictor” and has been highly touted by several local park administrators.
A Thor Guard system can cost from $5,500 for one school to more than $150,000 for a large city, said company President Bob Dugan.
Thor Guard works by measuring changes in the atmosphere’s electrostatic field, Dugan said.
The outdoor-mounted detectors and warning devices can provide eight to 20 minutes of warning, according to the company.
Other products, commonly known as lightning-strike detectors, are much less expensive.
StormTracker, made by the Boltek Corp. of Buffalo, N.Y., costs about $500 and is an add-on to a personal computer. It detects lightning strikes up to 300 miles away and plots them in real time on a map.
Dugan said Thor Guard’s advantage is that it does not depend on an actual lightning strike to provide warning.
But Richard Kithil, president and chief executive officer of the non-profit, Colorado-based National Lightning Safety Institute, calls Thor Guard’s claims “hogwash.”
Prediction `impossible’
“Predicting lighting is impossible,” Kithil said. “It’s a natural event. We can’t do that. Even the National Weather Service, with its million-dollar [computer] sets cannot predict lightning.”
Kithil said park districts and other organizations would do better to hire a professional meteorological service to provide reliable lightning warnings. Or at least purchase inexpensive radios that broadcast weather warnings, then get the word out.
In 1997 Park Ridge became the first community in the country to install lightning-warning devices throughout its 18-park system, choosing Thor Guard’s equipment.
It did so one year after a college student, John Scott Wade, 20, was fatally struck by lightning as he refereed a youth soccer match.
On the night the Thor Guard system was dedicated at a ceremony in Wade’s memory at Northeast Park, a warning siren sounded in another Park Ridge park where volleyball games were under way and youth baseball teams were warming up.
As children ran to a shelter, lightning struck a baseball diamond and blew out a scoreboard, knocking two people off their feet, a witness said.
No one was injured, and Park Ridge residents saw the incident as a sign that the $50,000 that community groups had raised for the system was worthwhile.
“If we saved even one life, it’s worth the expense and effort,” said Renie Schreiber, a spokeswoman for the park district.
Schreiber said residents are advised to leave parks when the system is activated and stay away until the all-clear is sounded. Coaches receive evacuation instructions.
The Naperville Park District installed the Thor Guard system in 2000 at two golf courses and four parks at a cost of more than $40,000.
“Probably the greatest advantage of the system is it brings a heightened awareness,” said Jeff Nack, parks director.
