Bengal mulls reintroduction of technology to forecast lightning

Kolkata: With 27 people killed due to lightning in a single day on Monday, the state Disaster Management department has taken a move mulling reintroduction of the technology to get prior information— at least an hour before—on lightning at particular locations to save lives of people.

This time it would be introduced with advanced infrastructure to ensure timely dissemination of forecasts up to the grassroot-level.

The state government had first introduced the technology in 2017 by engaging an expert US based company in this regard. Eight gadgets — called lightning detector— were installed at different parts of the state and dissemination of information up to the Gram Panchayats level had also begun.

But it was noticed after a few days that it was getting much delayed for the required forecast to reach to the grassroot level.

As a result, the project did not pick up pace. However, the infrastructure is still intact.

Now, the state government has once again initiated talk with the US-based company to reintroduce the same. But this time the service provider has to first ensure that there will be no delay in the dissemination of information.

"We have established a fresh talk with the authorities of the company contemplating reintroduction of the system to get location based forecasts on lightning. But I made it clear that they have to ensure that the information reaches the target group on time so that they can move to a safer place to save their lives. Or else what would be the use of a system if the information reaches after the incident takes place. We have urged them to set up their base station here," said the state Disaster Management and Civil Defence minister Javed Khan.

Explaining the reason why it had taken a long time to disseminate the information, a state government officer said that data captured by the eight gadgets used to get transferred to the US-based company's base station in New York from its office at Salt Lake for analysis. After receiving the analysed data, the Salt Lake office again used to disseminate the information to the state government. The state government officers are considering that the time required for data analysis and its dissemination would considerably reduce if the company sets up its base station in Kolkata itself.