[meteorite-list] 'A Meteorite Smashed Through My Roof'

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Apr 22 10:28:22 2004
Message-ID: <200310061529.IAA20687_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3162626.stm

'A meteorite smashed through my roof'
BBC News
October 6, 2003

The chances of being hit by a chunk of space rock are measured
in the billions-to-one. Roy Fausset, 59, had the closest of escapes
last month when what scientists now say was a meteorite crashed
through his New Orleans home.

"I walked through my front door and it was like a mortar bomb
had fallen on my house.

There was dust all over the floor of the entrance
way and the two doors leading to a utility room and
the powder room had been blown open.

There was ceiling debris everywhere. I thought it
must have been a broken pipe, but there was no
water.

As I was coming home, I'd noticed something on the
roof, but had thought nothing of it. It turned out
there was a hole the size of a basketball through the
tiles.

Whatever it was, it had passed through the attic,
then my daughter's bedroom, through the powder
room and into the crawl space under the floor.

I thought it must have been some frozen waste that
had fallen from a passenger airliner - they are
carrying out improvements at our local airport, so
planes have been diverted over our house.

I called the police. An investigator went
down into the crawl space and he found
some rock fragments. There are no rocks
in New Orleans, it's all silt. He said:
'It's a meteorite.'

I took a sample over to the nearby Tulane University,
where Stephen Nelson - the head of earth and
environmental sciences department - examined it.

He said the rock was rhyolite - which is found in
Mexico and Texas. He thought it must have been thrown
out of a plane by a vandal or become attached to a plane
somehow and then fallen off.

But now, after further analysis, it seems it has a
profile consistent with that of a meteorite. The police
investigator was right.

I've collected up all the pieces. It's not a meteorite
from Mars or Venus, which sell for $1,500 a gram. It
probably came from an asteroid, so is only worth $3 - $10 a
gram. It might help with the repairs.

But I don't care about the money. I'm just very grateful
that no one was injured. We really dodged the bullet. If
anyone had been at home, they might have been
killed. I think just hearing the noise
would have caused me to expire.

One of my neighbours was out in her yard with her children
eating popsicles. They heard the impact and thought it was a
car accident. If it had fallen 100 feet away, they could all
have died.

I've been very disorientated by the whole thing, especially
when I consider what a narrow escape we all had and what
could have happened.

I keep asking: Why me? Maybe God was telling me something?
I certainly went to church on Sunday and I will never mock
Him as I did in my foolish youth."
Received on Mon 06 Oct 2003 11:29:24 AM PDT