FAA figures out where a mystery metal pipe that crushed a car in Maine came from
Investigators finished looking into the strange incident at the Maine State Pier. Last week, a metal pipe seemingly fell from the heavens and damaged a car.
On Wednesday, April 30, at around 10:10 p.m., Portland police responded to a call about a damaged vehicle at the Casco Bay Lines parking lot at 56 Commercial Street. Officers found a Volkswagen Jetta SportWagen with its rear window shattered and its liftgate dented
At first, police believed that an object fell from an airplane overhead, given the car’s location and the extent of the damage. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) got involved and launched an investigation.
By Friday, the FAA confirmed the real source of the damage
A tiedown cleat on a nearby tugboat had broken, sending a 35-pound metal pipe onto the parked car. An FAA inspector visited the Casco Bay Lines terminal and spoke directly with the tugboat operator to verify what happened.
The FAA and Portland police have not provided details about why the cleat failed.
The car’s owner, Cam Malette, works as a deckhand at Casco Bay Lines. Malette told local outlet WMTW that the police suspected an object fell from the sky. “(The police) came to the consensus that they think the only way there possibly could have been that much damage is if it fell from the sky. And the whole time I was thinking: ‘Well, how am I going to tell my dad that my car is destroyed by something that fell from the sky?’”
His father, Anthony Malette, said, “The damage was just incredible and it couldn’t have been anything else other than falling from a good distance.”
No one suffered injuries in the incident. Malette still drives the car, though he now has collision wrap film covering the broken rear window. Cam summed it up simply: “If that hit someone, it would have been tragic. Thankfully, it just hit my car in the parking lot.”
