Posted: 12:34 p.m. Sept. 14, 2009
Questions remain after ice chunk hits Detroit home
BY MATT HELMS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
A Detroit retiree whose Sunday dinner plans were interrupted when a huge chunk of ice fell from the sky and tore a hole in his roof was hoping this morning that he could get the puncture fixed quickly.
Gerald Young, 77, saved a foot-long mass of ice wrapped in multiple bags in his freezer, to show as evidence to the Federal Aviation Administration. He and neighbors suspect the ice came from a jet that flew over their west-side neighborhood just before they heard a strange noise and a thud.
“I was in the kitchen preparing my dinner,” Young, a retired clerk in accounting for the Detroit Public Lighting Department, said at his home this morning. “I heard a thump. I thought it was a basketball hitting one of the garages or something.”
Neighbors two doors down who were having a baby shower – with a bunch of kids playing in the backyard – quickly knew it was no basketball.
“We heard a whistling sound,” said Ron Grant, 30. “It was an unusual noise. As we looked up, we saw a plane coming over, and then we heard a boom and saw ice come down off the roof.”
He and others were thankful no one was hurt.
Young’s nephew, Alfred Johnson, said he contacted the Federal Aviation Administration, which said it would look into the incident.
Young said he was hoping he wouldn’t have to make an insurance claim and that the FAA might be able to find the source of the ice.
But Tony Molinaro, spokesman for FAA in the Great Lakes region, said falling ice is not easy to probe.
Molinaro said investigators will look for clues from what’s in the ice that might link it to a flight and will speak with airliners to see if a particular plane might have been the source.
“But with ice, it’s really tough. It’s not like it’s a part of a plane,” Molinaro said. “It’s the toughest thing for us to try and trace, to be honest, but we always will give it a good try.”
Young said he was less frightened than surprised at what happened, and hopes he can get the hole in his roof repaired soon.
“I had seen a similar case on TV several years ago,” Young said. “I had no idea it might someday happen to me.”
Contact MATT HELMS: 313-222-1450 or
mhelms@freepress.com.
