A terrible lightning strike on the evening of Saturday hit the northern part of Uganda, an area known as the Palabek Refugee Settlement, with 14 people killed-many of whom were children. A church service was in place when the lightning struck this place, causing a chaotic commotion as people ran off to seek shelter from the bad weather.
Incident Details:
Local police reports indicate that heavy rain accompanied by thunder and lightning had been common recently in the region, as reported by local police; besides the fatalities, there were at least 34 cases of injuries in the tragedy that struck the community.
Area officials are said to have confirmed the children deaths; therefore there is even deeper pain due to their losses as their families, just like other members in that community are deeply grieving in unison. Radio station within that local setting report to air condolence messages urging the members in the village to stay in unity within this hard period.
About Palabek Refugee Settlement
The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) estimates about 80,000 asylum seekers and refugees in this camp. The camp was started to put people who ran away with war and unstable situations, and it was meant as a haven to many runaways seeking peace and protection in life.
The settlement, although it is provided with basic facilities, such as education and health, presents a great challenge to its members since they are so many in number and resources are few. Such adversities have, at one time or another, struck the community with disasters such as weather.
This is not the first case in Uganda where lightning kills people, especially children.This has happened four years back when lightning struck Arua town in northwestern Uganda, killing 10 children who had been playing football. How dangerous lightning strikes are to either rural or refugee communities with children playing or assembling for community functions becomes very clear.
Community Response
Now that the lightning has stricken the area, it is the local heads and bodies of humanitarian that are prepped to provide aid in the affected families. Counseling is there to help people who lose to try to process their grieve. There’s even talk about improving preventive measures in times of thunder and that includes organizing community level awareness campaigns to raise alarms as to the danger of these thunderstorms.
As the investigation is still going on, the call for better preparedness and response mechanisms for extreme weather events in refugee settlements across the region is on the rise.
For whatever reason, the loss of the young is a pain in itself, reminding that fragility befalls whoever is termed a refugee how their lives might be lost calamitously beyond their hands, taking life and trashing communities already battered to the bone by other forms of strain.
As this goes about, it calls for stepped-up measures of awareness towards safety and support in making such incidents less frequent over the future.
