[meteorite-list] PROBABLY NOT BOGUS Re: "Colombia confirms 'giant fire ball' a meteorite"

[Eric Christensen]

Hi Rich,

I wouldn't be too quick to dismiss this as a bogus event.  The 100-m crater reports are certainly false, but a variety of Colombian newspapers are reporting the event as a daytime fireball.  The online comments are full of eyewitness descriptions from people who claim to have seen the fireball and heard the detonation.  At least one article reports broken windows from a putative shockwave in the rural town of Piedecuesta.  The second link below also shows what appears to be a cell-phone capture of a smoke train.

There was one widely-reported (and now widely discredited) report from a farmer who claimed 8 cows were killed and a soccer field destroyed...since a soccer field is around 100-m in length, I suspect this is where the "100-m crater" rumor started.

http://www.eltiempo.com/colombia/oriente/explosion-en-santander-autoridades-investigan-si-fue-meteorito_7893516-1

http://www.vanguardia.com/bucaramanga-region/bucaramanga/74627-extrano-objeto-causo-sorpresa-en-santander

Saludos,

Eric Christensen