Safety Knights

I see this more for MSHA-covered sites than OSHA-covered ones. However, it should apply to any company performing work outside. I was out at a mine in southern California last week and they had a monitoring system that detected lighting up to 50 miles away (maybe 75?). They actually had a lightning strike when I was on the way into the site one morning. Granted it was out in the middle of nowhere (Mojave Desert), but they still had to go out and extinguish the small fire it created since they were the only personnel within about 40 miles of that area.

As far as policy-wise, I've always placed it in the EAP under the severe weather section, but do know some that do separate policies.

I work in the outdoor recreation industry. We use a lightening monitoring system that alerts whenever there is lightening detected with 60 miles. When the system alerts, our dispatchers look at the location of the strike and use the weather conditions to decide whether to shut down. If lightening gets within 40 miles we begin closing procedures.

The biggest problem we have is when we start seeing storm development right over our location. If we see a clouds developing within line of sight, we watch for the clouds to expand upward signifying the start of thunderstorm develop, we will begin closing procedures. We also have a shelter in place plan for this situation.

EAP is a good place for lightning protection and shelter in place. In the chemical demilitarization worlds we use 25 miles out as warning and 10 miles out stops all work at heights or on rooftops. 10 miles out is also the shelter inside a grounded building requirement

When lightning is detected at ten miles, we pull operators off tracked equipment. When within 5 miles we have everyone take cover inside until there hasn’t been a lightning strike for 30 minutes.