Something made a mess of the clay tiles on the roof a Sierra Vista family's home on Monday.

The question now is: What made the mess? Was it a meteorite? Was it something else? The King family called the police to document the incident, concerned about how the damage will be paid for, said Karen King, a mother of two who lives in the home.

King went onto Fort Huachuca at about 11:15 a.m. and did not notice anything unusual when she left. When she came home about four hours later, the roof damage was evident and tiles were scattered, some broken, some knocked into their yard, at 2044 Paseo El Paso.

The Kings just moved here from Fort Campbell, Ky., and closed on the house on Feb. 15.

From the pattern of the damage on the roof, it appeared whatever hit the house was traveling from the west at a pretty shallow angle of descent.

Neighbor Jenee Mittenzwei, who lives in the home across the street immediately east of the Kings', did not notice anything hitting the roof.

"I didn't see anything, didn't hear anything, but I've got three kids in here," Mittenzwei said. "We were here, though."

The Kings never heard anything unusual on the roof, and she believes it must have happened while she was out running errands.

"The police officer said 'I've never seen this one before,' " King said.

The Sierra Vista Police Department report, which King called in Monday afternoon when she noticed the strange damage, was inconclusive as to the origin of the hole in the roof.

"Unknown how it occurred, unknown if intentional or act of nature," reads the report, which was originally entered as a criminal damage call.

King said she called the Federal Aviation Administration in Tucson to report whatever had come from the sky and damaged their roof. The agency promised to send someone out, she said.

The Realtor who brokered the recent purchase of their home also came to take a look.

King said her inquisitive son Brandon, 10, was fascinated by the fact that whatever hit their roof was possibly from space.

"If it was a meteor(ite), he wants to keep it because he's all about space," his mother said.

Brandon's sister Kathleen, 7, could take or leave meteorites, so to speak. She is more interested in the mysteries of the ocean, her mother said.

Brandon got an opportunity to gaze at the stars with the help of the Huachuca Astronomy Club last week at General Myer Elementary School.

Unfortunately, as of Tuesday afternoon, no one had found whatever projectile hit the Kings' roof.

"I'm just seeing a lot of weird cars in the neighborhood," King said.

Doug Snyder, an amateur astronomer who is a member of the Huachuca Astronomy Club said he went out to see Tuesday the damage done to the King family's roof, and, like Brandon King, he was rather disappointed that whatever hit the roof hadn't been located.

"Evidently, it wasn't a wild bird," Snyder said, noting the velocity and angle at which whatever it was hit the tiles. "It was moving at a pretty good clip."

One theory that it might have been so-called "blue ice" from frozen commode water dumped from commercial aircraft did not fly with the amateur astronomer because of the general lack of commercial flight activity in this area, as well as the very slight angle at which the roof was struck.

"That comes to mind, but I don't think so," Snyder said. "And it wasn't just the neighborhood kids throwing rocks."

Snyder said it may or may not have been of an astronomical origin, but the incident, in any case, is "very curious."

If it was space debris of some sort, the neighborhood terrain of yards with rocks was not aiding anyone's search for the likely projectile, Snyder said.

Like others who stopped by the family's residence, Snyder said he left a card in case anything else turns up.

Don't panic its just the wind


Wind, not meteor, likely cause of damaged roof

The damage to a roof on Paseo El Paso on Monday was most likely caused by wind, many local residents with the same experience pointed out Wednesday.

A number of Winterhaven and Canyon De Flores neighborhood residents in south Sierra Vista reported being eyewitnesses to similar jumbling of their roof tiles, caused by gusts of wind, not meteors, as some had speculated regarding the cause of the damage Monday to the home at Paseo El Paso. One woman said she experienced the same sort of damage last summer to their home's roof and skylight at the family housing on Fort Huachuca.

Chuck Krzmarzick of the Winterhaven neighborhood said that on June 13, 2002, a "dust devil" tossed about the concrete tiles of his roof.

Unlike the King family Monday, Krzmarzick was in the house when the dust devil hit.

"I thought, man we're finally going to get some rain, and I went outside. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but I saw a dust devil," he said. "They (the concrete tiles) weigh maybe 10 pounds, but that dust devil sucked them right up."

Krzmarzick and several other local residents noted that all roof tiles are not required to be nailed down. Only the ones on the top ridge, the sides and the bottoms are typically secured to the house frame.

"The rest are just laying down," he said.

As such, with wind like the spring brings here, roof tiles can be affected with the right gust.

"It goes across the roof like a tractor or a roll of thunder," said resident Ken Hooton, whose Pebble Beach Drive home was hit three years in a row before he moved over to Winterhaven. "There's no doubt about what it was. It was a dust devil."

A Sierra Vista neighborhood code enforcement officer said the local wind rating consists of an expectation of peak gusts of 90 mph for a duration of no more than three seconds. If that rating were of 100 mph, then requirements for securing roof tiles would be somewhat stricter, but there would remain no requirement that they all be individually bolted down nevertheless, the city inspector said.

With the thermal expansion of roof tiles, bolting each one to the house frame would result in more broken tiles.

Rather than local government determining the rules for securing roof tiles, the code often refers to the roofing materials' respective manufacturer guidelines, he said.