On April 28, four people—including two schoolchildren—were killed by lightning strikes in Comilla.
Despite only light cloud cover in the afternoon, the children were flying kites in a field when they were struck. Locals quickly rescued them and rushed them to the hospital, where doctors pronounced them dead on arrival.
Meanwhile, two farmers working in another field were hit by a sudden lightning bolt and died instantly. Experts reviewing these incidents say that at least one or two of the victims could have been saved.
Khan MD Golam Rabbani, Technical Officer at the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES), explained: “A person does not retain electricity after a lightning strike; the current travels rapidly through the body to the ground. With immediate CPR, the survival rate can be as high as 70–90 percent—especially if the victim isn’t severely burned, CPR is started right away, and emergency services arrive quickly.”
He added that analysis of the Comilla cases suggests one or two lives might have been saved with prompt treatment.
“There’s a misconception that you shouldn’t touch someone struck by lightning,” he said. “That’s untrue. Although health complexes are far away in remote areas and few people there know CPR, victims in urban areas can often be saved with prompt resuscitation.”
Every month during the pre-monsoon storm season, lightning claims dozens of lives in Bangladesh—more than 3,400 deaths over the past decade. According to the Bangladesh Meteorological Department (BMD), this silent killer strikes hardest from April to June, when thunder clouds gather over open farmland, the haor regions, and rivers. Despite advances in forecasting and repeated warnings, the death toll remains stubbornly high. Lightning now causes more fatalities each year than floods or cyclones.
Declared a natural disaster in 2016, lightning continues to take lives at an alarming rate, especially in rural areas. Farmers, field workers, and children playing outdoors are most at risk—often struck while harvesting rice, fishing, or sheltering under trees or tin sheds. Despite years of warnings from scientists and disaster-management agencies, lightning remains overlooked in Bangladesh’s broader climate-resilience and public-safety strategies.
Fatal strikes
According to the Department of Disaster Management (DDM), lightning strikes killed at least 3,485 people between 2015 and 2024. Annual fatalities ranged from 226 in 2015 to a peak of 427 in 2020. Although deaths have dipped modestly—to 322 in 2023 and 271 by mid-2024—the average remains dangerously high at around 348 per year. In 2025, lightning fatalities have already surged: on April 28 alone, 23 people died, including 19 farmers. In Kishoreganj District, ten people were killed by lightning between late April and early May—a span of just 16 days. Other high-risk districts include Rangpur, Dinajpur, Nilphamari, Kurigram, and Dhaka.
Meteorologist Muhammad Abul Kalam Mallik of BMD’s Storm Warning Centre noted: “We issue daily thunderstorm warnings during this season, and more than two-thirds of all lightning-related fatalities occur in these months. However, our system cannot yet specify which upazila—or which village—will be struck.”
Technology not enough
With RIMES’s support, BMD has made substantial advances in lightning forecasting. By combining real-time satellite data, storm-tracking technology, and predictive models, it can now warn of lightning risk three to four hours in advance. These forecasts are shared via weather bulletins, social media, and mobile apps, through systems like Nowcasting and Thunder Alert developed with international assistance. A growing number of urban citizens and institutions access these warnings.
Yet in rural Bangladesh, many at-risk communities never receive them. There is no structured loudspeaker network in villages, and most farmers neither follow social media nor use weather apps. Early SMS-based pilots failed due to low literacy, poor mobile coverage, and minimal disaster-response training. As one meteorologist involved in the project observed, “What good is a forecast if the people who need it never hear it?”
Dr Mallik emphasizes that Bangladesh already has “the science, the data, and the tools to reduce lightning deaths—yet the gap between knowledge and action remains dangerously wide. Lightning is seasonal, mappable, and forecastable. Still, every year it kills hundreds—quietly and invisibly—in communities left out of disaster preparedness. With early-warning systems in place, the solution now lies in last-mile communication, education, and infrastructure: school drills, village loudspeakers, and CPR training. Until lightning awareness and response become part of everyday planning, this preventable tragedy will continue.”