Air Show - with no happy ending unfortunately

[Osram]

At 13:00 hours today I decided to quickly attend a nearby airshow as they showed a SG38 (aka Slingsby Grashopper, see thread on BoB2 forum) and the tower simulator with which the German air traffic controllers are trained.

Flying I saw a Yak52 with excellent aerobatics and a DC3 / C47 built in 1943 that had towed a glider on both DDay and Arnheim. Like nowadays on any German airshow, An2 carried around passengers. BTW - much recommended!

I was just able to go from one end to the other and looked at the SG38 when they started dismantling it and putting it into the trailer.

The announcer said "There is a storm approaching - pilots please secure your aircraft, visitors, please go into the hangars. The program is suspended till the front has moved over". I watched the SG38 people till they were finished and then thought about how to usefully spend my time (just standing around doing nothing is a bad idea) and my stomache decided to have it's say so I went a few meters over the by now almost empty asphalt the visitors are normally on to a caravan selling ice cream and hot dogs that was in the process of securing against the storm but still selling. One guy was buying something and I was looking inside trying to see the price and deciding whether to eat this or something else when I heard a lightning. I do not remember it as extremly loud/strong/nearby. When I turned I saw two small people, obviously children lying on the ground and I remember thinking "Strange - they can't really have been hit by the lightning, they must have toppled over from fright". Then I saw an adult lying near the metal guards that were on the other side of the asphalt and split the area of the visitors from the area of the airplane, pilots and groundcrew. Inside seconds the mother of a child came and got it up and I think the child reacted and helped getting up. Of course with such a big event there is police and medics and a medic ran to the adult inside 30, possibly even 15 seconds. Only when he started the well known movements of reanimating her I realised the full seriousness of the situation. Inside a minute or two around 10 cars+vans arrived, police, firedepartment and most importantly emergency doctor. Lateron I heard a medic say that they believed the lightning had hit the metal rail (probably between a meter and 1.5 meters high) somewhere, but it seems they did not exactly know the location where it hit.

Lateron I went to the sim as they were dismantling it. It seems in the same electrical cloud another lightning hat hit a tent pole or very near the tent they were in wrecking the elctrics/electronics of the huge sim.

There was even a second front incoming and the airshow was stopped completely and they got everyone off the airport asap.

It's of course a news story (in German, see
http://www.wdr.de/themen/panorama/20/ha ... ndex.jhtml
) and it says none dead yet, two still in danger of dying (I would almost guess the adult near the guardrail and the one child/small person in the middle of the street), 10 seriuosly wounded and 10 lightly.

Let's hope for those seriously wounded or even fighting for their life.

[Fredrick - A2A]

I hate lightning, nothing fun about it al all. I'm glad you made it , i understood the lightning was pretty close from where you where standing..

Finger crossed for those other guys...

[Point-man]

Man, such a good day turned so bad is awful. I will keep those people my thoughts and hope they turn out ok.

[Osram]

Like it normally is, after the event, it drops extremely quickly from the news and I am not 100% sure on the state of the affected people.

I have been where the lightning hit directly befroehand :-/

I only had my mobiler phone with me to take pictures, so excuse the horrible quality. These two were done probably around 10 minutes before the lightning and very much where it hit - it is supposed to have hit one of the metal guard rails you clearly see in the pictures.

http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob ... elar11.JPG
http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob ... elar12.JPG

BTW, here's the SG38:
http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob ... gelar6.JPG
http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob ... gelar8.JPG
http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob ... gelar9.JPG
http://www.shockwaveproductions.com/bob ... elar10.JPG

[iflyc77]

wow, scary stuff....
except the SG38, thx for those!

(im a rl glider pilot)

[Black Falcon]

Hi guys I am new here and this is my first post.
A few months ago my school transformer got hit by lightning and the thing got fried and exploded and the power was off at the school.

[SeaVee]

Sad for the injured people... hope they make it.

Here in Florida we have alot of lightning strikes, especially in the very frequent summer afternoon thunderstorms.

Once while driving leaving Disney World, I saw a direct lightning strike on a 50-60ft tall pine tree about 50 yards off to the side of the car just in front of us. At the instant of the strike the crack sounded almost like an explosion. About 6 feet of the length of the tree trunk instantly turned bright red like a stove coil set on HIGH and a half second later that section burst totally into flames. Very impressive the power of that strike.

After seeing that firsthand I find it amazing any human has ever survived a direct lightning strike (a very few have) and its quite understandable now that a near miss could easily kill you anyway.

[Target]

My wife and I seem to attract it ourselves. We've lived in three different houses in three different states and so far the one we're in now is the only one that hasn't attracted an bolts out of the sky. But we've only been here a year. We had 3 strikes in our first house, all hitting the same exterior door. Blew out the security system each time.
I once ignored the advice to get off the computer during a thunderstorm, that was the last time. As soon as I heard the thunder I felt the jolt come through the keyboard. Strange thing is the PC survived.
The same year, as we slept, we had an experiance much like SeaVee's. Bolt hit a tall pine behind the appartment in which we were living. I hate those late night explosions. Practically all the bad ones came at night while we lived in Ohio.
Lighting, like tornados, can be a funny (strange) thing.

[Getti]

WOW im so sorry and can u plz put a translation of that story or a link here i cant read german