Meteorite crashes in Monahans, Texas News Story

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March 26, 1998

Meteor splinters over Monahans

HOT ROCKS - These two fragments of a meteorite that exploded through the atmosphere Sunday night fell near a group of boys playing basketball. The city of Monahans will put them on display after NASA completes testing.
No one inside a house or building said they heard it.

Outside witnesses in and around Monahans did. They reported
hearing what they described as a sonic boom. Some said they
heard more.

Paula Tucker heard one. Others reported as many as four
sonic booms.It was about 6:30 p.m. Sunday, March 22,
when the booms rippled across the Ward County Seat.

One of those who heard four was Orlando Lyles. He was less
than 50 feet from ground zero cooking fajitas. His children
were among the ones who first found the meteorite since
dubbed Monahans '98 I.

"It was about 6:30 p.m. that the thing came down," recalls
Lyles. "Kids were out playing basketball. I was outside
barbecuing. We heard the boom, four booms, and we heard the
whistle. It landed in the lot between my house and Manuel
Juarez's house. It just dropped."

Monahans '98 II was found by a sheriff's deputy on Monday
morning on his way to work. It was embedded in the asphalt
of Allen Street.

The hoopla began almost immediately. It has not subsided.
Just fallen meteorites, says Everett K. Gibson are nearly
unique things to study.

Gibson is a space scientist and geochemist with the Lyndon
B. Johnson Space Center near Houston. He was in Monahans on
Tuesday, March 24, to take the space rocks back to Houston
with him.

Monahans Police Capt. David Watts reports that by Wednesday
afternoon, March 25, the NASA scientists already were
finding things they had not known before about the rates of
radiation loss and material loss.

Gibson says the fragments of the meteor discovered in a
Monahans vacant lot and in a Monahans street were stony
meteorites - not the more common nickel-iron meteorites but
still common.

"The unusual thing about this find was that we don't often
recover them as quickly as this," says Gibson. "There are
plenty of meteorites found but most of them are not found
for a long time and are not as suited for study as these."

Curiosity and wonder were the order of the day on Sunday
when the rock fell in the vacant lot at Monahans.

Before the night was over, Monahans would become a
mini-celebrity. The vacant lot where the meteorite fell was
clogged with sightseers by the time police arrived.

Recalls Lyles of the seconds after the first meteorite fell
(No one apparently noticed the second that Sunday):

"The kids ran over there and picked it up. There are seven
kids, I think. I was barbecuing fajitas and I had 500 people
in my yard.

". . .I called Alan Martin first thing (Martin is a newsman
with Radio Station KLBO. His family and Lyles's family are
friends)."

Says Martin: "When I got there I took it back from the kids.
It was still warm. I put it back in its little crater in the
ground. I called police. They seemed to be not taking it
seriously at first."

It wasn't long until Mayor David Cutbirth was on the scene
to examine the heavenly rock.

He said the kids would be honored for recovering it.

Lyles again: "If it had hit 50 feet either side it would
have hit something. We were lucky in a way."

By this time Martin was making a few extra dollars with
feeds to the networks.

Lyles said he and his family like to gaze at the starts
through a telescope. He says they'll be looking even more
intently now.

Two meteorites found here not first,
M.P. White found one 60 years ago

The two meteorites that fell on Monahans on Sunday, March
22, definitely were not the first, according to the
scientific literature and NASA's Everett K. Gibson.

Gibson was in Monahans on Tuesday, March 24, to gather the
two rocks (Monahans '98 I and II) in and take them back to
the Lyndon B., Johnson Space Center near Houston for
analysis.

Gibson and the literature note the first meteor reported to
have been found in the region was discovered near Monahans
by an M.P. White in the Summer of 1938. It was called the
Monahans Meteor. It weighed 65 pounds when it was found. But
by the time, the specimen was taken to a laboratory for
study, the weight was down to 1.5 pounds, caused one article
said by the loss of the oxide crust formed when on its
journey through the atmosphere to Earth. Monahans Meteor
1938 was discovered in the sandhills 14 miles South,
Southeast of Monahans. White said he was digging and found
the meteor under about a foot of sand.

Falling rocks, high prices vie for attention

Falling rocks and rising prices hammered the Monahans City
Council for attention druing their regular meeting Tuesday,
March 24.

The falling rocks involved the meteorites that fell on
Monahans Sunday night and a scientist from the National
Aeronautical & Space Administration (NASA) who wants to
borrow the meteorites for scientific study.

The rising prices involved bids for expansion of city hall
and municipal court space which came in higher than
anticipated and were tabled for further study.

Dr. Everett K. Gibson, who was born in Seagraves and grew up
in Plains and Denver City and received the first phase of
his education at Texas Tech, asked the city to borrow the
two meteorites for study by NASA for about 60 days. This is
a rare opportunity to study meteorites that have only been
on earth for 49 to 50 hours.

Gibson said he has been studying meteorites for 37 years.
Most meteorites he has found have been in Antartica. Of
the some 22,000 meteorites in NASA's possession, about
20,000 have come from that continent.

He noted that the type that fell on Monahans are quite
common and not of any real monetary value. However, it is
hoped that by studying them, it can be determined just how
big of a meteorite they came from before entering the
earth's atmosphere. Apparently both pieces that fell here
came from the same original meteorite and there could be
more in the area.

He noted that meteorites fall every day and night, about 100
tons per year.

The meteorites that fell here are about 4 1/2 billion years
old, about as old as our solar system. It is not from Mars
which would make it extremely rare and valuable. Gibson was
one of the scientists who found a meteorite in the antartic
and advanced the theory as a result of that rock that there
was at one time life on Mars.

Gibson said after the examination of the Monahans meteorites
is concluded, he will assist the city in any way in putting
up some kind of display, incuding possibly recovering the
66-pound meteorite that fell on Monahans 60 years ago. That
meteorite was found by M.P. White.

City manager David Mills said this was an administative
decision to loan the rocks to NASA and gave his permission
along with the council's blessing.

Pecos Enterprise

Meteorite eye-witnesses sought

By GREG HARMAN
Staff Writer
PECOS, March 27, 1998 - Did you see it? People from as far
as 120 miles from the Monahans meteor crash site Sunday
reported witnessing the bright descent of extra-terrestrial
rock. But the odd thing is, said Steve Schmidt, director of
the Blakemore Planetarium in Midland, nobody west of the
crash site in Monahans has reported viewing the object as it
fell.

Schmidt is working with a team of scientists from NASA and
elsewhere on studying the recovered meteorites. "It is
extremely rare that so many observed the event," said
Schmidt, "and then for it to be recovered so quickly."

Any eye-witness accounts, especially including video or
audio tapes, of the event by Pecos-area persons would be
enthusiastically welcomed by the team of scientists at
Blakemore Planetarium. "We are particularly asking that
(merchants) with monitoring cameras review their tapes from
Sunday night." These tapes, he said, may contain very slight
lightening caused by the meteor's flash or reactions of
shoppers that may help pinpoint the exact time and direction
of the meteor.

Video evidence of meteors has been helpful to scientists in
the past. Much was learned about the El Paso Superbolide,
which crashed through the Earth's atmosphere on Oct. 9,
1997, by eye-witness accounts of the meteor's vapor trail.
Also, in the early `80s, a meteor that struck an automobile
in Peakskill, N.Y. was found before the owner of the vehicle
was aware of the incident due to extensive recordings by
football fans who videoed the meteor as it streaked by near
the football stadium.

When a meteor is recovered as quickly as Sunday's twins were
much may be learned about where the meteor came from by
studying the radio isotopes issuing from the meteor. "Many
of these are not harmful to humans," said Schmidt, "and have
extremely short half-lives (or, lifespan). One lasts only
for 72 hours."

Schmidt said he had been able to perform a visual survey of
the twin meteorites. By studying these unique rocks,
scientists will be able to view the condition under which
the matter was fist formed. "It's sort of like looking back
in time," said Schmidt.

To report any information about the Monahans meteor call
915-683-2882 during regular business hours.

The Monahans News

Finders keepers

Seven Monahans children want back the meteorite they
retrieved when the space rock zipped over their heads and
smacked into a vacant lot on Sunday, March 22.

Members of the Monahans City Council are considering the
request. The Council, pending a survey to determine exactly
where the rock fell, instructed City Manager David Mills to
place the question on the Council agenda for action on June
9.

Orlando Lyles, father of two of the children, says: "We
believe the meteorite belongs to these seven kids. They were
the ones who found it."

He suggests the parents are ready to go to the courts, if
necessary, to get the meteorite back.

Lyles says the rock that came from the Asteroid Belt has
monetary value, dollars that can be used by the children for
their education or anything they may choose.

Steve Arnold of International Meteorite Brokerage based in
Tulsa, Okla., says the space rock may bring as much as
$25,000 on the world market. Arnold, who was in Monahans
Tuesday to meet with the children and their parents, says he
already has offers of about $20,000.

If a decision is made that the city retain the meteorite,
Mayor David Cutbirth says he will be the first to donate to
a special trust fund that could be established to help pay
for college tuition for the Meteorite 7.

District 2 Council Member Jeppie Wilson says: "I can
understand these children may believe they are being done
wrong. I can understand. They don't want to be run over."

Says District 1 Council Member; Maria Garcia: "We just want
to do the right thing."

It is in Garcia's district the meteorite finders and their
families reside.

The comments were made on Tuesday, May 26, when the children
and their parents appeared before the Council. They asked
for their rock which ended its journey in the edge of a
vacant lot between the home of Lyles and a neighbor, Manuel
Juarez In Spanish, Juarez says he plans to give the
meteorite to the children if the survey finds the space
debris landed on his property.

The Council, its members note, does not want to turn the
conflict into a City Hall versus the Kids Fight in which the
Council loses politically even if it keeps the meteorite
christened Monahans '98-I. Custody of Monahans '98-II, a
sister meteorite to the one the children found, is not at
issue.

Monahans '98-II fell onto a city street the same day and was
recovered by a sheriff's deputy on his way to work the next
morning. Both meteorites currently are in safekeeping at
City Hall.

Lyles spoke for the group when they appeared before City
Council on Tuesday, May 26, to request the city return
Monahans '98-I to the seven boys who found it. Lyles, other
parents and the children, had attempted to have their issue
placed on the agenda, a request denied. They spoke as part
of the citizen comment section of the agenda.

"We believe the meteorite belongs to these seven kids,"
Lyles told the Council as he gestured to the children seated
behind him. "They are the ones who found it."

Lyles noted he had been told by city officials that Monahans
98 1 and II would be displayed in an exhibit at City Hall
and that the boys and sheriff's deputy who found the second
would recognized in the display by photographs and news
stories.

The boys say they want their space rock back now that
federal scientists have finished base studies and returned
it to the City of Monahans.

In that letter to Lyles from City Manager David Mills, Mills
writes: ". . .I believe the most prudent position for the
city is to consider the meteor as property of the Citizens
of Monahans. The City would retain the meteor until such
time that the appropriate judicial court of record
determines otherwise."

Lyles said Monahans police had told him the meteorite would
be returned when the scientific studies were finished.

Those studies were finished and the space rock returned to
Monahans City Hall.

"We don't want to have to go to court," Lyles told the
Council. "If that's what we have to do, that's what we all
will do."

Mayor Cutbirth assured the Meteorite 7 that the meteor would
be given to Juarez immediately if a survey finds that the
property on which it landed was his property and not on city
right-of-way.

Outside City Hall, young Neri Armendariz, one of the
Meteorite 7, wondered: "If they want our rock so bad, why
don't they just pay for it?"

No one answered at first. An adult assured him Monahans City
Council would do the right thing.

Meanwhile, television cameras rolled with the Tale of the
Meteorite 7. Meteorite broker Arnold says he'll be back in
Monahans June 9.

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