Ball Of Fire Lights Up Night, Blamed For Burning Trailer
A meteor, space junk or something else lit up the sky over Michigan and Ontario early Friday, brightening the lives of hundreds of people who saw it and possibly destroying a trailer in Windsor.
No one was injured in the fire, which burned one trailer to the ground and singed two others around 12:30 a.m. The fire happened in a storage lot less than 300 yards west of Countryside Village mobile home park, about a mile west of Windsor Airport.
“It was like a ball with a blue tail,” said Shane Harvey, 21, who was bicycling when he saw the object light up the sky.
“I seen it come through the clouds, so it must have been pretty low,” Harvey added. When he pedaled a bit farther, he saw the burning trailer and raced home to call the fire department.
But neither Harvey nor any of the other gawkers who backed up traffic at Cabana and Sixth Concession to get a look at the incinerated trailer actually saw the meteor hit.
“We checked and could not find any debris that will tell us whether it was or wasn’t a meteorite,” said Police Sgt. Joseph Monteleone.
“But the timing of the fire and the meteor sightings lead us to think a meteorite caused the fire. It’s very fortunate it landed where it did,” Monteleone added, pointing up the road to motel and boat store across the street from the charred trailer.
Fire inspector Al Martin poked around the wreckage, but didn’t find evidence of a meteorite. He said the fire could have been caused by a vagrant, pointing to several open trailers in the storage lot.
“I’ll be glad when we get back to normal,” Martin said. “We’re tying up a lot of people for not a lot of damage.”
The Atomic Energy Control Board of Canada dispatched investigators to check for radiation from possible space junk from a nuclear-powered Russian satellite. The tests were negative. Some scientists speculated that the fiery object may have been a chunk from a falling satellite because many witnesses said the thing traveled from north to south, the direction that many satellites orbit.