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Odd if true, because planes being hit by lightning are actually fairly common occurrences.

AN AIRCRAFT that crashed minutes after taking off in a thunderstorm, killing all 90 people on board, is thought to have been struck by lightning.

The Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737-800 had just left Beirut in Lebanon for the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa when it burst into a “ball of fire” and plunged into the Mediterranean.

There were two Britons among the 83 passengers on board. One of them was named as haulage firm owner Afif Krisht, 56, who had dual British-Lebanese nationality, and whose former wife lives in Plymouth.

Flight ET-409 crashed into the sea two miles offshore. It disappeared from radar screens five minutes after taking off at 2:37am (12:37am British time).

The Lebanese army said it had broken up in the air. Witnesses described the impact as a “flash that lit up the whole sea”.

Lebanese authorities quickly ruled out terrorism, and weather is thought to have played a part in the crash, which happened amid thunder, lightning and heavy rain. Beirut airport officials said the aircraft had been struck by lightning and there were reports the crew requested a change of direction to avoid the thunderstorm after reaching 8,000ft.

Lebanese defence minister Elias el-Murr said there was no evidence of a terrorist attack and that the weather was “in principle” to blame for the crash.

President Michel Suleiman ruled out sabotage “as of now”, while transport minister Ghazi Aridi said: “The weather undoubtedly was very bad.”

Some relatives expressed anger the aircraft had been allowed to take off. One said: “They should have delayed the flight for an hour or two to protect the passengers. There had been strong lightning bolts and we hear that lightning strikes at planes, especially during take-offs.”

However, Ethiopian Airlines chief executive Ato Girma Wake said: “There was bad weather. How bad it is, I will not be able to say. But, from what I see, probably it was manageable weather, otherwise the crew would not have taken off.

“Let me first extend my deepest sympathy to the family members and friends of the victims.”

Last night, more than 30 bodies had been recovered, along with debris such as children’s sandals.

An RAF helicopter based in Cyprus joined the search by Lebanese army patrol boats, helicopters and divers off Na’ameh, six miles south of Beirut.

The eight-year-old plane, leased from CIT Aerospace, is believed to have been acquired from Ryanair last September. It underwent maintenance checks exactly one month ago, with no technical problems being found.

Ethiopian Airlines has two other Boeing 737-800s, one of which was bought from Scottish airline Flyglobespan a week before it collapsed last month.

Mr Krisht’s former wife Tania, 44, said: “I got a call at 5:20am to tell me he was dead. I’m still praying for a miracle – that he might be clinging to a bit of debris somewhere.

“He was here only a couple of weeks ago, visiting for Christmas. He was the most generous man and was still one of my best friends. I will miss him dearly.”

The other passengers comprised 22 Ethiopians, 54 Lebanese, one French, one Russian, one Canadian, one Syrian and one Iraqi. They included Marla Pietto, wife of the French ambassador to Lebanon, and two toddlers.

Andree Qusayfi said of his brother, Ziad, 35, who was on the plane: “We begged him to postpone his flight because of the storm. But he insisted on going because he had work appointments.”

Zeinab Seklawi said her son Yasser, 24, had called her as he was boarding. She said: “I told him, ‘God be with you’ and I went to sleep. Please find my son. I know he’s alive and wouldn’t leave me.”

Ethiopian Airlines said a British team, experts in dealing with the aftermath of aircraft accidents, was due to arrive in Beirut last night.

The eight people, from Blake Emergency Services in London, will help with the rescue mission and set up a family assistance centre for relatives.

Reports of fire could suggest a ‘cataclysmic failure of one of the engines’

THE Beirut crash involved one of the world’s safest aircraft being flown by an airline with a good safety record.

The Boeing 737-800 was only eight years old, and the crash was the first to be suffered by state-owned Ethiopian Airlines for 14 years.

Experts said the thunderstorm alone should not have brought the plane down.

Aviation safety analyst Chris Yates said it was far too early to determine what had caused the crash, but he noted that modern aircraft were built to withstand all but the foulest weather conditions.

He said: “One wouldn’t have thought that a nasty squall in and of itself would be the prime cause of an accident like this.”

He added that reports of fire could suggest “some cataclysmic failure of one of the engines” or that something had been sucked into the engine, such as a bird or debris.

Sidney Dekker, a professor of flight safety at the School of Aviation at Lund University in Sweden, said if reports of an engine fire proved to be correct, the accident could have resulted from a loss of control at a relatively low altitude, where it would have been difficult to recover.

Prof Dekker, who is also a Boeing 737 pilot, said the plane’s engines were overpowered to fulfil performance requirements in the event of the loss of an engine at take-off. He said this tended to turn the aircraft towards the dead engine.

He said poor visibility in low cloud, combined with high winds, may have contributed to the problem faced by the pilots trying to regain control.

The last Ethiopian Airlines crash was in 1996, when a Boeing 767 ran out of fuel after being hijacked, and 123 of the 175 people on board were killed when it ditched in the sea.

In a previous incident in 1988, 31 of 104 people on board a Boeing 737 were killed when it crash-landed while returning to Bahar Dar in Ethiopia after striking a flock of pigeons following take-off.

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Missouri farmer killed by lightning strike

ST. LOUIS — A Missouri farmer has died after being struck by lightning while checking on his cattle.

Laclede County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Ayres says the farmer was hit by lightning about 9:30 a.m. Thursday but the man’s family didn’t realize there was a problem until he failed to come back inside about an hour and a half later.

The lightning strike happened in the Phillipsburg area about 175 miles southwest of St. Louis. Strong storms are dumping inches of rain on Missouri, Kansas and Illinois, and flash flood warnings have been issued in parts of all three states.

Ayres says the farmer’s name and age aren’t being released yet. A cow also was killed in the lightning strike.

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LAKE CHARLES, LA (KPLC) - A charred hull is all that is left of a boat after it was struck by lightning, a day of fishing gone bad.

Winnfield Nagle was nearby at Fred’s Lounge when it happened, but he said, at first, it just looked like an old boat.

“I thought it was an old fishing boat near the channel. I did not realize anything was wrong. When I got here and began talking to a guy about all of the police lights I realized something was wrong. He said there had been a fishing boat that was struck by lightning,” said Winnfield Nagle.

Richard Bergeron and Joseph Landry, both of Lake Charles, were fishing when it happened. Richard Bergeron suffered minor injuries, but Joseph Landry was not so lucky. Officials said he was dead upon arrival.

“People really need to watch the weather when they are out this time of year. We have many lightning storms come up real quick, and they underestimate them. They can do a lot of damage in a short amount of time,” said Remy Broussard with the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries.

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Solider Key, Florida — Authorities say a boater was killed when struck by lightning near Soldier Key in Biscayne National Park.

U.S. Coast Guard spokesman Nick Ameen says the man was struck Saturday afternoon while standing on a 14-foot boat with an aluminum hull. Two others were also on the boat, but not injured.

The victim’s name has not been released.

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Lightning strikes, rattler bites man in two-day span

What are the chances?

By JB Miller

Published Friday, September 18, 2009 1:11 PM MDT

It was getting to be rather a ho-hum weekend at the Sonoita-Elgin Fire District firehouse when Mother Nature struck from sky and earth.�

On the afternoon of Sept. 13, Sonoita-Elgin Fire Department (SEFD) personnel responded to Rain Valley after a lightning strike ignited a fire that burned nearly three acres near a subdivision. �

“Lucky for us it rained shortly after the strike so all we had to do was basically mop up,” said SEFD Battalion Chief Kevin Venos. “People right now think we’re in good shape, but we still need to keep our eyes peeled.”

On Sept. 14, a local construction worker was brought to the station to be treated for a rattlesnake bite.� The snake struck the worker after he lifted a piece of sheet metal.�

“The poor fellow got hammered good,” said Venos.�

Emergency personnel knew the man was bitten in the leg by a Mojave rattlesnake because the worker’s boss decapitated the snake and brought it in a bucket. Venos said that isn’t necessary anymore because the anti-venom is the same for all snake bites. �

“It looked like it hit him twice,” said Venos. “That’s an automatic helicopter ride.”�

The patient, “a young adult,” was flown to University Medical Center in Tucson.�

Lightning strikes, rattler bites man in two-day span

What are the chances?

By JB Miller

Published Friday, September 18, 2009 1:11 PM MDT

It was getting to be rather a ho-hum weekend at the Sonoita-Elgin Fire District firehouse when Mother Nature struck from sky and earth.�

On the afternoon of Sept. 13, Sonoita-Elgin Fire Department (SEFD) personnel responded to Rain Valley after a lightning strike ignited a fire that burned nearly three acres near a subdivision. �

“Lucky for us it rained shortly after the strike so all we had to do was basically mop up,” said SEFD Battalion Chief Kevin Venos. “People right now think we’re in good shape, but we still need to keep our eyes peeled.”

On Sept. 14, a local construction worker was brought to the station to be treated for a rattlesnake bite.� The snake struck the worker after he lifted a piece of sheet metal.�

“The poor fellow got hammered good,” said Venos.�

Emergency personnel knew the man was bitten in the leg by a Mojave rattlesnake because the worker’s boss decapitated the snake and brought it in a bucket. Venos said that isn’t necessary anymore because the anti-venom is the same for all snake bites. �

“It looked like it hit him twice,” said Venos. “That’s an automatic helicopter ride.”�

The patient, “a young adult,” was flown to University Medical Center in Tucson.�

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MEXICO CITY – An amateur football player was killed by lightning in Loma Bonita on the outskirts of the eastern Mexican city of Veracruz, police said. Efrain Pea was on the field with his team playing a local league match in bad weather Monday.

In the 55th minute, three consecutive lightning strikes occurred, one of which knocked down the 18 players on the field, killed the 24-year-old Pea and injured Octavio Corsino, 22, Felipe de Jesus Contreras, 31, and Ezequiel Alfonsin, 35.

Before the match, the umpire warned the players about the danger of the storm, but “they wanted to play and didn’t care about the bad weather”, police said.

The lightning bolt electrocuted Pea as it entered his mouth, according to the initial investigation, and exited through his right leg.

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Matthew Glomb had been looking forward to spending time with his son this week on North Carolina’s Outer Banks.

But the father-son trip ended tragically Monday evening when Glomb was struck by lightning while jogging along the beach near his retirement home. Rescue officials in Southern Shores, N.C., said he was killed instantly.

Glomb’s Lake Ridge neighbor and good friend of nearly 30 years, Joe Malinowski, said Glomb spent a lot of time at the beach, and was excited for the family getaway.

The retired Coast Guard officer and attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice, along with his wife Lucy, son Alex and daughter Emily, had been at the beach house for about a week.

Lucy Glomb and their daughter had just returned home Monday night to drop off one of Emily’s friends and pick up another before heading back down. Alex, along with some of his college pals, stayed at the beach.

It was going to be the last family trip this summer before Alex returned to James Madison University this fall for his junior year of college and Emily headed back to class at Woodbridge High School, neighbors said.

When Lucy Glomb heard the news about her husband’s death, she called many of her close knit neighbors, including Malinowski.

“She said ‘I wouldn’t want you to hear about this from anyone else,’ and she called all of us last night,” he said.

Glomb was remembered Tuesday as not only a consummate career and family man, but also a man of the church. He was an auxiliary pastor at Old Bridge United Methodist Church in Lake Ridge.

Pastor Burton Robinson said he was one of the top members in his church.

“He led a mission trip to North Carolina for at least six or seven years, he worked with youth … did a whole lot of different things and did a whole lot for the church,” said Burton.

Malinowski said his latest youth mission trip, in North Carolina somewhere off of Interstate 95, was to install a handicapped ramp at a home of a disabled person.

Mary Jane McQuade, who lives next to the Glombs, remembered the holiday block parties the family helped organize three times a year. She said his passing is made even sadder because Thursday would have marked the couple’s 26th wedding anniversary.

She also received a call Monday night from Lucy Glomb.

“The first words out of her mouth were ‘isn’t it a shame this happened to Mister Safety?’” said McQuade.

She said Matthew Glomb always saw to it that everyone had a good time while ensuring they stayed as safe as possible.

McQuade held a copy of the “Cruel Sea” in her hands, a book Glomb gave to her son. Inside the front cover was an inscription that read, “Stay close to your parents … while not salty, they’re worth their salt.”

Malinowski said he’s also received an inspirational note from Glomb.

“The Vietnam War kind of got in the way of me graduating from college in 1969, but 30 years later I got my degree in 1996 and he sent me a note that said ‘your work matters to God.’ That was just the kind of person he was,” said Malinowski.

Last summer, another lightning strike claimed the life of a 23-year-old Woodbridge woman jogging along the oceanfront in Virginia Beach.

The woman was vacationing at the resort town after graduating from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg.

Officials said there had also been severe weather in the area when the woman was killed.

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NEWARK — One of the four men struck by lightning during Sunday’s thunderstorms has died, police said.

Det. Todd McClendon said early this morning one of the men was pronounced dead at University hospital. Neither his name, nor the names of the other victims, were disclosed.

A second victims remains in critical condition in the hospital, while the final two were listed in stable condition with burns and other injuries.

The men were struck about 6:15 p.m. in a wooded area behind an apartment complex on Mount Vernon Place.

The severe thunderstorms that hit Newark today began in Bucks County, Pa. shortly before 5 p.m., moving quickly through northeastern New Jersey before crossing into New York around 6:20 p.m. Funnel clouds were reported in Hunterdon County, while several counties received quarter-sized hail.

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KILL DEVIL HILLS, N.C. – Officials believe a lightning strike caused a man’s death in the Outer Banks.

The Southern Shores Fire Chief told WAVY.com they received a call around 5:30 p.m. for a body on the beach. Chief Harvey says the body was found near Mockingbird Lane.

He says he is “reasonably certain” a lightning strike is to blame.

The male victim did not have ID on him, but Chief Harvey says investigators found his vehicle near by. They believe he is in his late 40s and from Northern Virginia.

Neighbors described a wave of thunderstorms with lots of lightning and heavy rain.

The incident has been turned over to the Southern Shores Police Department.

In Suffolk, three lanes of eastbound Rt. 58, in the area of the scales, were closed due to a downed tree. Two lanes have since reopened.

The National Weather Service reported a tree down at the corner of Suffolk Meadows Boulevard and Baron Boulevard in Suffolk.

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A Stillwater girl who wanted to enjoy a burst of warm summer rain Tuesday was struck by lightning and rushed to a hospital, where she died within hours.

Taylor Zimmerman, 14, had just changed into a swimsuit at her home at 1016 Sixth St. S. as thunderstorms rolled into the Twin Cities about 3 p.m.

While a friend hesitated on the porch, Zimmerman ran into the rain, urging her friend to join her, police said. As the rain fell and the wind picked up, Zimmerman took shelter under a large tree in her front yard.

Neighbors heard what happened next.

“All of a sudden — boom!” said Art Willemsen, who lives a half-block away.

Other neighbors said their houses shook as though they had been struck by a truck.

Police said lightning coursed through the tree and knocked Zimmerman down.

“The lightning turned red when it hit the tree, and you saw all this stuff flying,” said next-door neighbor Mary Ridgway, who was on her computer and had a view of the tree through a window.

However, a covered swing set blocked her view of the tree’s base, where Zimmerman had fallen.

Ridgway’s other next-door neighbor ran out of her house and saw the girl lying motionless beside the tree. Its trunk was scarred by the lightning, and the lawn was covered with splinters. She called 911.

Within minutes, Stillwater police Sgt. Chris Felsch and another officer rushed to the scene. The girl had no pulse, and for about a minute, the officers tried unsuccessfully to

revive her until paramedics arrived.

Felsch said Zimmerman’s mother, identified by neighbors as Kristal Ann Zimmerman, 40, was at the scene and left with her daughter in the ambulance.

Neighbors said the girl had two younger sisters and that the family had just moved into the house a few months ago.

Felsch said he received a report that paramedics had restarted Zimmerman’s heart on the way to the hospital. But officials with Gillette Children’s Hospital in St. Paul released a statement

from the family about 8 p.m., saying the girl had died.

“The family of Taylor Zimmerman … wants to thank people for their support and share that their daughter was a wonderful girl who will be missed tremendously,” the statement said.

The National Weather Service said lightning is the most common deadly weather threat and that the outdoors is the most dangerous place to be during a lightning storm. The weather service advises that when you hear thunder or see lightning, you should quickly move indoors or take shelter in a hard-topped vehicle and remain there until the storm passes.

Particularly, the weather service said not to take shelter under an isolated tree or the tallest trees in the area.

The storm front, which brought heavy rain, lightning and hail to east-central Minnesota, largely dissipated in the metro area by 7 p.m.

Tad Vezner can be reached at 651-228-5461.

DANGEROUS SKIES

Recent lightning strikes in the region include:

July 2005: Three men are struck in a Somerset, Wis., campground; they recover. Earlier that summer, a construction worker was hit during a thunderstorm while he was working on a new Wisconsin 64 bypass bridge near Somerset.

May 2002: A man is struck outside a Cub Foods supermarket in Blaine after reportedly opening an umbrella.

July 2001: A lightning strike injures 23 soldiers at the Camp Ripley military reservation.

August 2000: Two men are struck while returning to the campsite after Ozzfest in Somerset. One dies, the other is critically injured. Three other people also are struck at the same campground; they survive.