[meteorite-list] NPA 02-09-1969 Allende Meteorite Meteor Report, 2

[MARK BOSTICK]

Paper: Columbus Dispatch
City: Columbus, Ohio
Date: Sunday, February 9, 1969
Page: 15A

Fireball Believed Meteor

     CHIHUAHUA, Mexico (UPI) - A blinding blue-white fireball, believed to 
be a meteor, turned night into day across Mexico and the southwestern United 
States early Saturday then pounded to earth like a bomb.
     "The light was so brilliant we could see an ant walking on the floor," 
said Guillermo Asunsolo, a Chihuahua newspaper editor.

    "IT WAS SO bright we had to hid our eyes."
     The light from the fireball was sighted for at least 1,000 miles along 
a line stretching from central Arizona deep into the superstition-ridden 
outlands of northern Mexico.
     "The people, especially the people in the small villages, are very 
alarmed," Asunsolo said.  "They say this is an announcement that the world 
will soon end."

     ASUNSOLO AND other witnesses in the two countries indicated the 
suspected meteor thundered to earth in the almost impassable terrain of the 
Sierra Madre mountains south of Chihuahua and north of Dulrango, Mexico.
     "It was the brightest light since Haley's comet in 1908," said 
Asunsolo, editor of the newspaper El Heraldo.  He said he felt the impact 
when the fireball struck ground and was "quite scared."
     "We ran up to the roof and saw a very big round ball moving from south 
to north," he said before the object crashed.  "It was not red, but an 
intense blue-white."

     REPORTS FROM such mountain towns as Parral, Santa Barbara de Oro and 
Valle Allende said the Mexican residents saw the fireball and felt it pound 
to earth Asunsolo said the impact created "a tremendous tremor" that shook 
the ground for hundreds of miles so hard that "some windows broke."
     But Dr. Ronald Schors, an astronomer with the Jet Propulsion Lab at 
Pasadena, Calif., who was visiting the McDonald Observatory at Fort Davis, 
Tex., said the fireball might have broken up an never landed.
     He said the tremors felt by residents might have been caused by a sonic 
boom created by the fireball streaking through the night sky.

     "IT WAS extremely bright," Schors said.  "We had high clouds int he 
area but it burned right through.  It was much brighter than Haley's comet."
     Schors said it was "several times brighter than a full moon."
     Reports from Parral, in the northern site of Chihuahua, said residents 
tumbled from their beds, thinking it was an earthquake.
     Asunsolo said the area where the fireball apparently fell is barren, 
without roads and reachable only by helicopter.  He said the Mexico 
government probably would sponsor an expedition into the Sierra Madres in 
search of the landing site.

(end)

Clear Skies,
Mark Bostick
Wichita, Kansas
http://www.meteoritearticles.com
http://www.coinandstampman.com
http://www.kansasmeteoritesociety.com
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