A 60-year-old woman from a village in Madhya Pradesh suffered injuries to her shoulder when a huge chunk of ice fell on her out of a clear sky, something locals and regional media initially described as a natural wonder.
While the local administration chose not to investigate the matter further, aviation experts said she might have been a victim of a phenomenon known as ‘blue ice’.
Put simply, it’s a mixture of urine and poop from toilets in airplanes that leaks from aircraft’s toilets and freezes due to the extremely low temperature at high altitudes, reports The Times Of India.
Neighbours of the woman say she was fortunate since the ball of ice first hit the roof before hitting her, and if it had hit her directly it might left her with far greater injuries, said the report.
However, this phenomenon is hardly new or unique.
Over the past years, several such accidents have been reported in US and Europe, with a British couple’s roof being punctured by a chunk of ice in October 2015, and a block of ice falling on a woman from UK in 2013.
In US a chunk of ice put a 2 feet wide hole in the roof of a house in 2006, and smashed a car in Dallas three years later. Several such incidents have been reported to the aviation authorities in different countries, as airlines are trying to prevent such potentially fatal leaks.
Here’s what it looks like when a pile of ice comes crashing down:
In the case of the MP woman, a Delhi-based aviation consultant has reported the incident to India’s aviation authorities and urged them to take it seriously.
Images sourced from Reuters