A Fire That Burned Down A Guy's House Might Have Been Caused By A Meteor

David Mack
·2 min read
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Cal Fire / Via Twitter: @CALFIRENEU
Cal Fire / Via Twitter: @CALFIRENEU

Officials are investigating whether a meteor is to blame for starting a fire that destroyed a northern California home on Friday night.

Fire crews were called to the blaze on a cattle ranch just before 7:30 p.m. in Nevada County, 45 miles northeast of Sacramento, around the same time that others nearby reported seeing a ball of bright light flying through the sky.

"I heard a big bang," homeowner Dustin Procita told news station KCRA. "I started to smell smoke. I went onto my porch and it was completely engulfed in flames."

Procita managed to save one of his dogs, but one died in the fire.

Firefighters ultimately extinguished the blaze, but it took about four hours.

Video appears to capture the moment that a fiery meteor tore through the sky and collided with the area.

Officials with NASA also said on Facebook that they were aware of a reported fireball traveling around 32,000 miles per hour over northern California at the same time.

Fire officials told the Los Angeles Times that it will take a few weeks for investigators to issue an official report on the cause of the blaze.

According to a 2010 report from the National Research Council, it's estimated that between 50 and 150 metric tons of very small cosmic objects, mostly dust, falls to Earth each day.

But your odds of ever dying as a result of a meteor are fairly slim: 1 in 1,600,000, according to a 2014 paper from Tulane University earth sciences professor Stephen A. Nelson. (Compare that to roughly 1 in 90 for dying in a car accident, or 1 in 292 million for winning the $1.9 billion Powerball jackpot.)

"I always watched meteor showers as a kid but I didn't want them landing in my yard or through my roof," Procita told KCRA.

"They said it's a one in four trillion chance so I guess I might be buying a lottery ticket today."

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