Wilcox duo watches fire trail in night sky

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Feb 25, 20150

In a lone house on Wilcox Road southeast of Dusty Monday night, Allen Cochrane sat watching TV in his living room.

Suddenly his attention was drawn to the picture window.

He got up and yelled for his wife.

Going outside, he saw it clearly – a long, white and orange trail across the night sky.

“It looked almost like a plane breaking up,” said Vicki Cochrane. “It did not look like it was real high. It was really long, just pieces of matter following in this trail. Then there was a break, and more pieces bringing up the rear. It was low.”

She estimated the streak might have been 50-75 miles long.

They stood on their porch at the last house on Wilcox Road toward Penawawa Road and watched it. Their nearest neighbor is a mile away.

“Do you think it’s going to explode?” asked Vicki as they stared at the sky.

“It lasted at least 35-40 seconds,” she said later. “It was just cool. Whatever it was had exploded and this was its tail. It just kept coming.”

Allen is a Fire Commissioner for District 13.

“It was interesting because it was not moving that fast,” he said, indicating that it started in the southeast, going toward Colfax.

“It looked almost like a failed missile launch. We just stood and watched it. Other people had to have seen it.”

The trail continued white, he said, while the smaller pieces breaking off appeared orange.

“It looked about the height of the spray planes returning for more spray where we live,” Allen said.

He reported the time as between 9:30 and 10 p.m.

“It looked like on the Fourth of July— Roman candle spray going across the sky,” Vicki said. “Almost exactly parallel to the ground.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Allen explained. “You see meteor showers, but meteors go quick. I’ve never seen one going that slow.”

When the object finally disappeared from view, the couple wasn’t sure if it had burned completely out or just went behind clouds.

“If it was a meteor, it had lost so much of its speed,” said Allen.

“It was so slow that it looked like it could have fallen, but didn’t,” Vicki said.

On Tuesday morning, NASA’s Orbital Debris Program Office identified it as the re-entry of a Chinese rocket body, which was used in the launch of a satellite in December.

The National Weather Service office in Spokane received calls, but they had not officially identified it. Reports came in from witnesses in the western U.S. as far south as Arizona and, in the north, into Alberta, Canada.