There is an increase in lightning strikes in Tsholotsho district where three people have been killed, including 18 herd of cattle and six goats since the beginning of the rainy season. Tsholotsho District administrator Nosizi Dube pointed out that lightning has become a cause for concern while speaking about the district’s flood and disaster preparedness yesterday.
“As Tsholotsho district we are ready based on last year’s experience. We have launched a disaster preparedness plan and we trained all wards on all disasters that might befall them. Recently we faced a disaster when 11 people died in Botswana and we managed to bury them last week.” Dube said.
Normally,this district is prone to floods but at the moment there is no immediate danger to this regard but instead, the district had recorded a high rise in lightning incidents.
“The first incident was in Ntulula area in Ward 3 where a bolt of lightning struck a kitchen hut, threw out two children and killed their parents,” narrated Dube.
The two children, aged nine and three, were thrown out and watched helplessly as their parents were burnt to ashes.
Their parents’s ashes Nkulumo Ndebele and his wife Junior Sibanda were buried in a grave on the spot of the incident.
Another incident took place in Ward 19, where an old woman was burnt to death after being struck by a bolt of lightning while in her hut.In the same surprising way her grand children were thrown out and therefore survived the strike.
Lightning also struck seven head of cattle, six goats, and two brothers lost 11 beasts which they had earmarked for a cattle breeding project in Jimila area
In the latest incident that occurred last Saturday a woman lost around $30,000 in cash and property worth thousands of dollars when lightning struck her homestead and reduced the house to ashes.
“We do not know how to assist people who would have lost property and beasts in such incidents,” Dube said.
So far the district civil protection unit chairperson Dube, said they have launched a safety programme in most schools and were working hard to spread it to all parts of the district.