Utah goat killed by ice chunk from aeroplane, sparking FAA investigation

The unusual accident happened on May 6 at about 4:30 PM GMT, when Cassidy Lewis was at her home in Eagle Mountain in the United States. Lewis told local TV station KUTV that she heard a loud bang, and the house shook. She ran outside to find all her animals in a state of shock. "The roosters were freaking out. The horses were going crazy," she recalled.

Then Lewis spotted a large hole in the roof of the shed where she kept her goats. One of the animals was injured and bleeding heavily. She found pieces of ice on the ground beneath the hole in the ceiling. Given the size of the hole and the amount of ice on the ground, she explained she had assumed it had been a chunk of ice, at least the size of a basketball.

Photos from the scene showed ice on the roof around the hole and the shed's interior pierced by the ice chunk. Police officers who arrived at the scene offered only one likely explanation - the ice had fallen from an aeroplane. Lewis recounted: "He just said that we’re below a flight path and it could have been ice from an airplane, which I had no idea that could have happened."

Lewis took the injured goat to the vet, who determined it had to be euthanized. She then contacted the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the international airport in Salt Lake City for an explanation of the incident. Her home is situated on the flight path to the airport. The FAA responded that they were investigating which aeroplane the ice could have come from.

The accident has made Lewis more cautious. She admitted: "Honestly, every time I hear a plane go by, I’m thinking, ‘Do I need to?’ Like, it’s made me a little bit nervous about it happening again." Falling ice from planes is rare. Aircraft are treated with special fluids to prevent ice from forming on their surfaces as they pass through cold layers of the atmosphere. Nevertheless, incidents do occur, and several have been documented.

Source: metro.co.uk