WARSAW, Aug. 27 (Xinhua) -- Authorities in Poland's Tatra National Park have announced that a renovation of the trail leading to the Giewont peak would start Sept. 2, after a lightning strike last week killed four people as they tried to reach the summit.
The park authorities said that a renovation had been planned for long, but the recent thunderstorms had further damaged the chains climbers were using for support, Polish Press Agency (PAP) reported Tuesday.
Four people, including two children, were killed and tens wounded last week, when a lightning struck the support chain which tourists were using to climb on the Giewont peak, one of the highest in the western Tatras, part of the Carpathian Mountains, located on the Polish-Slovak borders.
Following the tragedy, many questioned whether the metal chains and especially a metal cross on top of the Giewont peak should be removed as metal could be attracting lightning to the area.
Authorities, however, argue that the material from which the chains were made is not to blame for the tragedy and that it would not be changed. They said the risk of lightning strikes was similar across various areas of the Tatras, regardless of the presence of metal chains.
"Such experiments would give people the wrong impression that Giewont is all safe now, because there are no more metal chains, but it's not the chains which are the problem. The problem is ignoring various warnings concerning the Tatras," Ewa Holek-Krzystof, representing the Tatra National Park, told state news agency PAP.
