Cattle, sheep and horses killed after lightning strikes in Galway
A number of cattle, sheep, and horses were killed when lightning struck a high voltage line in a field near Gort in Co. Galway recently.
Fianna Fáil councillor in Galway County Council, Gerry Finnerty told Agriland that there were seven cattle, several sheep, and three horses across two farms that were killed as a result.
The councillor in the Gort-Kinvara area said: "The pylon fire could be seen from miles around.
"There was a lot of brightness from the lightning as well."
In a statement to Agriland, the ESB stated: "The overnight lightning strikes that occurred on Sunday into Monday led to damage on the high voltage line between Cashla and Prospect and on pole mounted transformers on the medium voltage network in Galway which led to a series of fuses being blown.
"Unfortunately, a number of livestock that were in close proximity to the high voltage line in the Gort area were found deceased on Monday morning.
"ESB Networks are actively engaging with the landowners involved and are continuing to investigate," the statement added.
Met Éireann stated the majority of lightning occurs in the storm cloud itself or between clouds.
On average approximately 10-20% of all lightning over Ireland are cloud-to-ground strikes, the national forecaster added.
The maps below show the prevalence of lightning on the west coast on Sunday night and Monday morning:
On Sunday, August 11, the map shows that the incidence of lightning began to occur from after 8:00p.m, continuing until the early hours of Monday morning, seen on the other map.
The ESB confirmed that around 36,000 homes, farms and businesses were without power on Monday morning following thunderstorms overnight.
A spokesperson for the ESB Networks told Agriland that “crews are mobilised this morning to continue to restore power to all customers and repair damage to the infrastructure in areas which have been impacted by lightning-related outages”.
The majority of customers who experienced power outages in the Galway areas had their power restored on Monday, with all remaining customers power restored on Tuesday.
The ESB have reminded the public to always call them immediately on 1800 372999 in the event of a lightning strike causing damage to any part of the ESB infrastructure.
