It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no it’s… “blue ice,” but was it responsible for damages to at least two homes on Long Island this week?
Earlier this week, Lois Farella and her husband were abruptly awakened by the sound of something crashing through their home on Long Island, New York. “We both woke up to a very loud bang,” Farella told CBS Local New York in an interview. Farella said it was about 3:30 a.m. when she and her husband were awakened by the loud noise. “Suddenly, we heard a noise, both of us, and sat up, and said, ‘What was that?’ and we didn’t know.”
Whatever it was, it caused a basketball-sized hole in their roof, and they weren’t the only ones to experience damage.
Next door, Ann Grace’s roof on Home Street was also heavily damaged. After inspecting the damage, roofer Bryan Lanzello found a “brown, wet stain” in the attic where something had punctured through the shingles and wood.
“It’s hard to understand what could have done this. It had to have come from a plane,” Lanzello told CBS Local New York. “A bird couldn’t have done it.”
The homeowners believe the damage was the result of “blue ice” falling from an aircraft. “Blue ice” is a mixture of human waste and a blue liquid disinfectant that freezes at high altitude which occasionally leaks from airplanes’ waste tanks. Airlines are not allowed to dump their waste tanks in mid-flight, however, leaks have occurred.
There were at least 27 documented cases of “blue ice” impacts in the U.S. between 1979 and 2003, and “blue ice” was responsible for causing damage to the roof of a home in Chino, California, in 2006.
Because the neighborhood sits in a flight path, the homeowners assumed the damage was the result of a leak in a passing airliner’s facility. The FAA disagrees. After examining the damage on Tuesday, the FAA said they “found no evidence of blue fluid,” and that at the time of the incident, “the nearest plane overhead was three miles from these homes.”
The residents aren’t buying the FAA’s story though.
“I’m very frustrated…I feel they’re just going through the motions,” Ann Grace said.
Meanwhile, both homes will need to be repaired, which will likely cost the homeowners substantial money, something the FAA and the airlines don’t want to have to pay out.
It is interesting to note that the FAA’s investigation didn’t acknowledge the stain discovered in Ann Grace’s attic, but instead focused on finding evidence of the blue fluid as well as viewing the radar tracks, which they felt “proved” their case because no airplane was directly over the residences at the time of the incident.
But could “blue ice” still have been responsible for the damages, considering the nearest plane was three miles from the homes? According to a 2011 episode about “Blue Ice” on the TV show “Mythbusters,” wind currents could have altered the trajectory, making it possible that it was the source of the damage to the homes.
The FAA’s website includes a fact sheet regarding “blue ice,” which includes “myths” and offers other explanations for that “mysterious something” that may have hit you or your home. One explanation includes bird migrations, which they say occur “during a time when fruit trees are ripening. As the fruit goes through a bird’s digestive system it loses none of its color, which means if it was blue going in, it will be blue coming out.”
The website also states that “It’s very rare for anything to fall from an aircraft. Sometimes, metal items thought to fall from aircraft actually came from a nearby manufacturer, warehouse or business, or were kicked up by passing traffic.” So if it’s rare to have anything fall from an aircraft, how does the FAA explain the following?
Just last Friday residents of a neighborhood in Kent, Washington, were surprised by a refrigerator-sized piece of a landing gear door crashing down into their street. And in May, pieces of an Air Canada Boeing 777 scattered down over cars on a highway near Toronto, just days after a door from a smaller jet plane had landed on a fairway on a Miami golf course. It appears “the sky is falling” now has new meaning.
If you suspect an item has fallen from an aircraft, the FAA asks that you contact them immediately, and that you “not disturb the item, and take note of any overhead flight activity at the time, including type of plane and distinguishing marks. The plane’s registration, or tail number, is printed on the tail of the aircraft, and it serves as the plane’s ‘license plate.’ If you can record it, that number will be extremely helpful.” Yes, be sure to get the “license plate” of that offending aircraft!
Like most problems the government doesn’t want to deal with, it often ignores them or finds ways not to deal with them. It appears “blue ice” is one “icy bm” the government doesn’t want to try to disarm at this time.
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