Huge chunks of ice ‘from passing plane’ crashed through homeowner’s roof onto his bed
Jamie Shean rushed upstairs after hearing an "explosions" to discover a block of ice had crashed through the roof and shattered onto his bed
A MAN claims he is lucky to be alive after a giant block of ICE crashed through his roof and landed his bed - just before he was going to turn in.
Jamie Shean was watching television in his rented flat with his friend Rob Jarvis when they heard an ''explosion'' in his bedroom.
The pair rushed upstairs at around 10.15pm on Saturday expecting to find a stray firework had smashed through his bedroom window.
But they were met with a huge, gaping hole through the roof and the ceiling, with a roof joist hanging down.
Huge chunks of ice - some the size of a football - were littering the floor.
It is unclear where the ice came from but it is thought it fell from the bottom of a passing plane.
Jamie, of Lockleaze, Bristol, said: "It was a hell of a crash. I realised I would've been dead if I had been in bed at the time.
"I was sitting there watching telly - it must have been 10.15pm, maybe 10.20pm, I'm not sure.
"There was just this almighty 'boom', like a massive crash from the bedroom. It sounded like an explosion.
"I fully expected to find that someone had fired a firework through the window and it had gone off in the room.
"But the window was still there so I thought there had been a boiler exploded in the loft or something.
"Then we looked around and saw all this ice, huge pieces of it, everywhere," he added.
The pair cleared what they could of the mess and tried to preserve the ice - but some chunks were too big to fit in the freezer, and in total they saved just one or two pieces.
And when Jamie went outside to assess the damage and work out what had happened, all he could see was a large hole in the corner of his roof, just above his bed.
He said: "It's really hard to work out exactly how big the block of ice would've been. It must have been the size of a sink or something.
"It smashed through tiles, a wooden joist and the bedroom ceiling and shattered into pieces."
Landlord Ronnie Arathoon, who is contacting his insurance company and sending the roofers round to begin repairs, wants answers.
"It's pretty crazy this could happen. It was like a block had crashed through, a block of ice. It's absolutely mad, what are the chances?
"We've put it down to a plane, it's the only thing we can think has happened. I'm just glad Jamie is okay," he added.
There were two planes flying directly overhead roughly around the time the incident happened.
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The first was an EasyJet flight which flew east to west over Jamie's home at approximately 10.07pm, on its descent into Bristol Airport from Rome.
But the second, more likely suspect, was a Thomas Cook flight from Banjul in Gambia that was coming in to land at an airport in the West Midlands, and flew over Jamie's home at 10.17pm.
A spokesperson for Britain's biggest airport, Heathrow, said reports of ice damaging buildings do happen - with around 25 reports across the country of damage to buildings reported every year.
The cost to repair homes damaged should be paid by the airline.
But under the flight path into and out of Heathrow they are often met by Heathrow itself, because of the uncertainty around which plane might have produced the ice.
A spokesperson for Heathrow said: "Whilst ice falls from aircraft are rare, ice can form on the outside of an aircraft when it is cruising at high altitude.
"As it descends into warmer air, these chunks may break away and fall to the ground.
"Despite popular beliefs, modern aircraft do not have the facility to eject toilet waste whilst they are airborne.
"Waste collection happens when the aircraft lands at an airport and is disposed of responsibly," the spokesperson added.
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