New home hit by falling ice block

A LARGE block of ice that is presumed to have fallen from an overhead plane, has destroyed part of a Melksham couple’s roof.

The half a kilo block of ice smashed into Keith and Ruth Mead’s house at their home on Cranesbill Road causing significant damage and made an incredible noise on impact.

Amazingly Ruth was in the attic room at the time but escaped unhurt.

“It was a horrendous noise, you can’t really describe it,” she said. “I thought someone had crashed into the front of the house. I ran downstairs to Keith and he was outside, I then saw the damage.

“I immediately thought, thank goodness it didn’t hit anyone; it could have killed someone. It happened around 9am so only a short time after mums and dads were walking their children to school. It could have easily hit someone of them.”

Keith added, “I was in the study when I heard an almighty crash. I immediately thought a major accident had happened outside the house so I went outside to have a look. I was so shocked to find our roof tiles smashed all over the road and ice everywhere, metres away from the house.

“I looked up and saw there was a big hole in the roof of our house. I then realised what had happened. The block of ice that hit the roof must have been huge, it had smashed into smaller pieces and they were all over the road. When we weighed the largest pieces they were about  500 grams.

“The insurance company didn’t quite know what to say. They are sending someone out as soon as possible to have a look and fix it. We’re lucky we have insurance otherwise we would have to pay for it ourselves.”

“It’s annoying for us but it could have been a lot worse.”

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) say instances like this are relatively rare.  In comparison to the 2.5 million flights a year in UK airspace, approximately 25 ice falls per year are reported to the CAA.