A soccer player has died after being struck by lightning mid-game in Indonesia.
Videos have been posted online of the incident, which show the FBI Subang player walking across the field when a bolt of lightning suddenly hits him before he falls to the ground.
According to British newspaper The Mirror, the 35-year-old player collapsed at Siliwangi Stadium in Bandung on the island of Java. The incident took place during a friendly match between 2 FLO FC Bandung and FBI Subang, the newspaper has reported. The identity of the player has not yet been confirmed, but he has been named by the London Evening Standard as Septain Raharja.
Local news site PRFM reported that the man was struck on Saturday, February 10, at around 3:30 p.m. local time. He was taken to Sariningsih Hospital where doctors pronounced him dead.
It isn't the first incident of its kind in Indonesia. In 2023, a young soccer player was struck by lightning on the field during a match in Bojonegoro, East Java. The youngster was playing in an under-13s cup match when he was hit about ten minutes into the game.
He suffered a cardiac arrest and was taken to Ibnu Sina Hospital in Bojonegoro. The boy survived after being successfully revived and regaining consciousness after around 20 minutes, according to a report by BNN Breaking.
Lightning strikes are not uncommon in Indonesia, with its distinctive geology and tropical location resulting in favorable conditions for lightning. According to Statista, the country had the highest lightning rates in the world in 2022, with 76.5 million lightning events recorded. To compare, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates around 40 million lightning strikes hit the ground in the U.S. each year.
According to National Geographic, lightning occurs when there is "an electrical discharge caused by imbalances between storm clouds and the ground, or within the clouds themselves."
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) explains that lightning occurs when there are positive and negative charges within clouds or in the air.
"In the early stages of development, air acts as an insulator between the positive and negative charges in the cloud and between the cloud and the ground," the NOAA explains. "When the opposite charges build up enough, this insulating capacity of the air breaks down and there is a rapid discharge of electricity that we know as lightning. The flash of lightning temporarily equalizes the charged regions in the atmosphere until the opposite charges build up again."
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