Canadian Woman Startled by Near Miss after Meteorite Crashes through Roof

An image of the meteorite taken by Hamilton. *(Ruth Hamilton)*

Canadian woman Ruth Hamilton of Golden, British Columbia, was awoken in bed by her dog barking just moments before a meteorite crashed through the roof of her home on October 3rd.

"The next thing was just a huge explosion and debris all over my face," Hamilton recalled in an interview with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC). "I jumped out of bed and turned on the lights. I didn't know what else to do, so I called 911. Talking to the operator, she was asking me all kinds of questions, and at that point, I rolled back one of the two pillows I'd been sleeping on and in between them was the meteorite."

The melon-sized chunk of charcoal-grey rock had punched a hole in her roof before landing on her bed, only inches away from where her head had rested just moments earlier.

The hole in Hamilton’s roof left by the meteorite. *(Ruth Hamilton)*

"I was shaking like a leaf," Hamilton said. "You're sound asleep, safe, you think, in your bed, and you can get taken out by a meteorite, apparently."

Luckily, besides being shaken up, she wasn’t hurt.

Initially, Hamilton and a Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officer dispatched to investigate the event speculated that it might have been debris from a nearby construction site, however, that hypothesis was quickly dismissed.

"[The officer] called up there and they said they had not done any blasting that night. But the workers had seen a meteorite, or a falling star, explode and there was a couple of booms…Then we knew that it was a meteorite that had crashed through my roof," said Hamilton.

Peter Brown, a professor with the physics and astronomy department at Western University in London, Ontario, confirmed the rock was from space.

"It's certainly a meteorite," Brown said. "Everything about the story was consistent with a meteorite fall, and the fact that this bright fireball had occurred basically right at the same time made it a pretty overwhelming case."

Hamilton said she plans to send the meteorite to Brown and his team for further study, but will keep the rock once they've concluded their work.

Despite its seemingly anomalous nature, Hamilton’s experience isn’t quite as unique as one might suspect.

In August of 2020, Josua Hutagalung, a coffin maker living on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, had a meteorite puncture the metal roof of his home in a similar fashion.

So far, the only person known to be struck directly by a meteorite was Ann Hodges, an Alabama woman who, in 1954, was awoken from a nap by a meteorite smashing through her roof and hitting her in the hip after first striking a radio.

Hodges was not seriously injured during the incident.

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