Lightning Damage Statistics

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Half the wildfires in the western USA are lightning-caused. In total there are about 10,000 such fires costing BLM about $100 million annually.
     —Dale Vance, BLM, US Dept. Interior

From May to July, 1999 lightning started most of the 2282 Florida fires. Destroyed were 126 homes, 25 business, and 86 vehicles. Suppression costs were $160 million. Dollar losses amounted to $394,600,000.
     —NFPA Journal Nov/Dec 1999

Lightning caused 30,190 house fires amounting to $175.2 million in losses each year during the 1991-1995 period.
     —NFPA, 1998 Report

18% of all lumberyard fires and 30% of all church fires are lightning-related.
     —Ohio Insurance Institute, Columbus, OH

During the 5 year period 1992-1996, we paid out $1.7 billion in lightning-related claims. This was 8.7% of total claims and 3.8% of dollar losses.
     —St. Paul Ins. Co.

Each year we have about 307,000 claims from lightning, amounting to loss reimbursements of some $332 million.
     —State Farm Insurance Co.

Five percent of all insurance claims are lightning-related, amounting to over $1 billion per year.
     —Insurance Information Institute, NY, Press Release 1989.

On annual average, we pay out about 3-4% of our claims as a result of lightning. Factory Mutual Companies.Looking specifically at storage and processing activities lightning accounts for 61% of the accidents initiated by natural events…in North American 16 out of 20 accidents involving petroleum products storage tanks were due to lightning strikes.
     —Journal of Hazardous Materials 40 (1995) 43-54

The most expensive civilian lightning loss on record in the USA was a Denver warehouse hit on July 23, 1997. Damage to building and contents exceeded $50 million.
     —NLSI, 1998

A lightning-caused explosion at the Naval Air Rocket Test Station (Lake Denmark NJ, 1926) cost $70 million with 13 people killed.
     —P. Viemeister, "The Lightning Book"

Some thirty percent of all power outages are lightning-related on annual average, with total costs approaching one billion dollars.
     -Ralph Bernstein, EPRI ; Diels, et al (1997).

Our City of Virginia Beach VA has 321 fully automatic traffic signals. From May 1999 to May 2000 we experienced 359 lightning caused malfunctions at a direct equipment cost of $36,425. Adding up all USA cities, the total costs must be very high.
     —G. Van Eiken, Traffic Supervisor, City of Virginia Beach VA

Utility company nuclear power plant digital and I&C equipment safety feature activations were initiated by lightning in 19% of the cases.
     —US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, NUREG/CR-6579.

Lightning accounted for 101,000 laptop and desktop computer losses amounting to $125,417,000 in damage in 1997.
     —Computer Security News.

From 1990 to 2000 our records show 346 lightning incidents to our nuclear sites.
     —DOE Occurrence Reporting and Processing System Database.

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