Emergency slide from plane falls, damages Chicago home.
Surprise in the Sky: A Plane’s Safety Equipment Lands in Chicago Backyard
One Chicago household had the surprise of a lifetime this week when a piece of safety equipment from a commercial airliner fell from the sky into their backyard.
“I’m stunned a little bit. I’m just glad that everybody is safe and okay,” homeowner Patrick Devitt said. “Just seeing that in my backyard, like wow. This really happened. It fell off of an airplane and landed in our backyard.”
The house is not far from the airport, and Devitt’s son and father-in-law were inside when the slide hit the home, which made a sound they described as a “boom.” The house’s roof, window screen, and downspout were damaged from the impact.
“When it’s all stretched out, like it’s a little jumbled up I’m sure in the picture from when we dragged it out, it’s larger than a small car,” Devitt told WLS-TV. “It’s a very, very big piece of equipment.”
After the slide had scraped the roof and landed in the backyard, the men called the police, and within a half hour, the FAA was at the home to investigate. On the same day, the men told the outlet that two United Airlines representatives retrieved the slide.
“We immediately contacted the FAA and are working with our team to better understand the circumstances around this matter,” a statement from United said.
“This was not a bird strike or something that’s routine. It’s a rare instance that could have caused fatalities on the ground or even affected the stability of that airplane when it was landing,” he said.
However, this is not the first time an incident like this has happened. In 2019, an emergency slide fell from a Delta Air Lines plane in the yard of a Boston home, injuring no one, ABC 7 reported. Three years earlier, a similar incident occurred in Mesa, Arizona, in another case where no injuries were reported.
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