March 13, 2010
CARPENTERSVILLE — The Federal Aviation Administration is trying to determine whether a piece of metal that crashed through the roof of a Carpentersville house Friday fell off a passing airplane.
FAA spokesman Tony Molinaro said a long piece of metal, reportedly weighing about 3 pounds, was found inside the house. A report on WGN-TV said the home is in the 200 block of Orleans Street and its resident found the object in his or her bathroom when the resident arrived home at about 4 p.m. The resident also found a hole in the bathroom ceiling and above that a hole in the home's roof. When photographed from a TV news helicopter, the roof hole seemed to be about 2 or 3 inches in diameter.
"The local police have the piece and our inspectors probably won't be able to examine it until Monday," Molinaro said. "Their first step will be to determine whether it did come from an airplane. Sometimes pieces like that can get kicked into the air from trucks or from junkyards, who knows" and fall back to earth with enough force to smash through a roof, he said.
If the piece does seem to be an airplane part, Molinaro said, inspectors will look for an identification number.
"If there's a number, it should be easy to trace what plane it came from by using maintenance records. But if there is no number, some detective work will be needed. The inspectors will have to go to the radar tracks that day and determine what planes were over that area at the times the piece could have fallen. Then they'll have to find out where those aircraft are now and examine them."
Carpentersville police could not be reached Friday.