Ice chunk falls from sky into family’s Mississauga home
Transport Canada investigating whether the projectile fell off a plane landing at Pearson
Transportation authorities say it will be difficult to confirm if a chunk of ice that crashed into a Mississauga home Wednesday came from an aircraft, and if it did, to pinpoint exactly which aircraft it came from.
The crashing frozen projectile made a gaping hole in homeowner Carmela Caccavo’s roof and left broken pieces of ice strewn across the floor of the home about 25 kilometres south of Pearson International Airport.
The ice landed mere feet away from where an alarmed Caccavo was resting at around 6:30 a.m. Wednesday.
“I was shaking,” she said, adding that she believed the large chunk could have seriously injured or killed her.
Caccavo’s son, Michael, said he believes the damage could cost around $20,000 to repair.
Transport Canada is trying to uncover if the block of ice fell from one of several aircraft landing that morning at Pearson.
“It can often be difficult to determine the origins of the ice,” said Sau Sau Liu, a Transport Canada spokesperson.
“Transport Canada has not received an official complaint about this reported incident,” Liu said.
“The department has not received any information that the ice in this reported incident resembled blue ice (frozen waste leaking from a malfunctioning lavatory).”
Aircraft that have washroom facilities
on board are equipped with an enclosed sewage holding tank that is designed to be emptied at special facilities at airports.
“It is possible that a valve malfunctions and allows some leakage of the tank’s content,” Liu stated.
“If this happens, the liquid seeping from valves freezes and adheres to the outside of the aircraft when the aircraft is flying at high altitudes. As the aircraft starts its descent and the atmosphere gets warmer, the ice will start to melt and pieces will detach themselves from the aircraft. These pieces of ice will either melt or remain in their solid state before hitting the ground.”
Transport Canada does not compile statistics on how often such incidents occur, but Liu said that in 2018, Transport Canada reviewed 18 reports from individuals in British Columbia and seven reports from the Prairie-Northern region about a liquid substance falling on cars or property.
The department’s review “did not show a connection to blue ice from any specific aircraft or operator and required no further action for these reports,” Liu said.
However, three additional re- ports from British Columbia are under review.
According to WebTrak, an online tool that provides flight data from airports around the world, several aircraft from various airlines would have been descending into Pearson at that time of day. Among them were flights operated by WestJet and Air Canada, which both said Thursday there is no indication the ice fell from one their aircraft.
“We are not aware of any of our aircraft being involved, and subsequent maintenance checks have confirmed there were no issues with any of our aircraft ( Wednesday) that would account for this phenomenon,” said Air Canada spokesperson Peter Fitzpatrick. “I can also tell you that after reviewing our operations from Jan. 9, we determined our aircraft were a considerable distance from the location of this incident at the time it reportedly occurred, according to established flight data.”
WestJet spokesperson Lauren Stewart said Thursday the airline has not heard from the Transportation Safety Board and “we have had no reported incidents.”
“We are glad to hear that the family involved in the incident are safe,” she said.
Stewart said it will be difficult to zero in on the carrier from which the ice may have fallen.
Several considerations will have to be taken into account, including exact flight path, winds and air temperature. Even more cumbersome is that at “6:30 a.m. on a weekday morning, would be an extremely busy flight time,” Stewart said. Back in Feb. 2017, WestJet accepted blame for an ice chunk that crashed through a Calgary home. That incident also left a hole in the ceiling and fragments of ice on the basement stairs.
Stewart called that case “an extremely rare incident.”