Origin of flying metal that hit home remains unknown
Ashley Fantz and Ina Paiva Cordle
Miami Herald, FL
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The crash happened just minutes after a couple of handymen had fixed Bob Amchir's Wilma-ravaged pool patio Wednesday.''It sounded like a bomb,'' he said. ``My wife screamed.''Amchir ran outside his Davie house and looked down to find a 2-inch by 3-inch, 2-pound piece of scorching metal had torn through his roof and smashed his tile. He thought it might be from a satellite. Or a plane.
Shaken, he dialed Davie Fire-Rescue, which summoned Davie police, which then called the Federal Aviation Administration.The federal investigators arrived at the house on the 4900 block of SW 61st Avenue and took the metal part, which Amchir described as hot to the touch.
Late Thursday afternoon, FAA spokesperson Kathleen Bergen told The Miami Herald that the mystery object could not have fallen from a plane and that the agency's probe was over.NASA officials said, however, that they had registered no orbital debris -- space junk -- reentering the atmosphere in the area on Wednesday.
Suresh Atapattu, education coordinator at the Buehler Planetarium & Observatory at Broward Community College's Davie campus, said a meteorite the size of the metal would have likely been noticed as it entered the atmosphere.
feb 17, 2006
Ashley Fantz and Ina Paiva Cordle
Miami Herald, FL
____________
The crash happened just minutes after a couple of handymen had fixed Bob Amchir's Wilma-ravaged pool patio Wednesday.''It sounded like a bomb,'' he said. ``My wife screamed.''Amchir ran outside his Davie house and looked down to find a 2-inch by 3-inch, 2-pound piece of scorching metal had torn through his roof and smashed his tile. He thought it might be from a satellite. Or a plane.
Shaken, he dialed Davie Fire-Rescue, which summoned Davie police, which then called the Federal Aviation Administration.The federal investigators arrived at the house on the 4900 block of SW 61st Avenue and took the metal part, which Amchir described as hot to the touch.
Late Thursday afternoon, FAA spokesperson Kathleen Bergen told The Miami Herald that the mystery object could not have fallen from a plane and that the agency's probe was over.NASA officials said, however, that they had registered no orbital debris -- space junk -- reentering the atmosphere in the area on Wednesday.
Suresh Atapattu, education coordinator at the Buehler Planetarium & Observatory at Broward Community College's Davie campus, said a meteorite the size of the metal would have likely been noticed as it entered the atmosphere.
feb 17, 2006
