NUFORC Sighting 16987

Occurred: 2001-03-19 18:50 Local
Reported: 2001-03-23 00:00 Pacific
Duration: ?20 minutes?
No of observers: 6

Location: Austin, TX, USA

Shape: Fireball
Characteristics: Left a trail

HUGE blazing falling object (NOT the Mir).

OK, this was not so much a "craft", per se, as something enormous burning and fallng very slowly to Earth. NOTE: This was NOT the MIR, as this event was the Monday before. At sunset this past Monday, several people including myself, all abslutely stone-cold-sober, were at a Texaco gas station located on a high hill, at the intersection of "Exposition" and "Westover" in West Austin. "We" consists of myself, a 50-year-old semi-disabled retiree and college student; my son, ((deleted))l, 28, who works for a prestegious ((deleted)) company, doing precision ((deleted)) work; ((deleted)) friend and co-worker, ((deleted)); two adult male Service Station mechanics. They were fixing a truck my sonhad just bought the day before at an auction, and we all met there to check out the progress. My brother, ((deleted)), a photographer, who didn't have his camera and I could just kick him, had just been there to check out Joel's truck and had just driven away. A few minutes after ((deleted)) left, around 6:30pm or so, he called on this cell phone very excitedly and told us to immediately go out and look to the West in the sky. He said there was this amazing streak of fire falling really slowly toward the horizon. By the time we got outside, whatever it was had just broken up into three distinct pieces, all of which continued to fall incredibly slowly to the horizon. I guess they wer e at about 40 degrees or so up from the horizon when we first saw them. ((deleted)) rported it was higher when he saw it, and it was falling very rapidly. apparently when it broke apart, it started falling more slowly? Anyway, we first assumed it was the "Mir" falling (we obviously weren't real up on the details about when that was supposed to happen last Monday, although we know all about it now), but then we were reminded that "Mir" wasn't going to fall for a few more days. I was immeditaely concerned that it could be our space shuttle, which was also up there somewhere. But whatever it was really seemed like it must have been bigger thaftn that. We were amazed at how high and HUGE this object must have been, since it was probably 15-20 minutes at least before it finally disappeared into the horizon. We rushed home and swiched on the news, but, amazingly again, ther was NOTHING!! We've watched all week, but NOTHING (but the "Mir", big deal. This object looked to be WAY West of Austin, Texas, as we were looking pretty much due West, I think. It wasn't dark yet, and we could all clearly see that this was in no way anything but something ON FIRE, not contrails or anything "routine". We've ALL been walking around in question marks all week! Help! Has anyone else reported anything? For the sake of our fragile sanity, we'd sure appreciate a quick response of some kind, if only to tell us you're checking on it.

Posted 2001-04-01