Cali #004

Barrio Ciudad Cordoba

EXACT WEIGHT of this stone is 111.0 grams. 

At around ~4:30-4:40 PM in a home in the Ciudad Cordoba Barrio of Cali, the Timote family was in the living room and adjoining bedroom. There were 6 family members in the home watching TV and talking. The telephone rang, and the wife of the homeowner answered. On the phone was her sister who lives in Restrepo to the north, franticly saying that just moments before,  a massive ball of fire and smoke had just passed over her home, then exploded. She called her sister just seconds later to report the event. While the woman was still on the telephone, a loud bang shook the roof just above the wall which separates the living area from the bedroom, causing pieces of ceramic tile to rain down into the home and onto the family who was directly underneath the spot. They looked up and could see sunlight through a large hole which had just opened up in their ceiling. The family members rushed up the stairs to the rooftop terrace where they store things and hang laundry to dry. On the rooftop they could see the hole and damage, and then about one meter from the hole, they saw a black stone laying on the tile. When the homeowner picked up the stone, he quickly put if back down as he said it was painfully cold. He estimates less than 20 seconds from impact to the time he touched the stone. The Cali #004 meteorite had announced it's arrival on planet Earth with a bang! The family was dealing with a sick family member, and although they saw all of the news reports about the meteorite, they did not tell anyone what had happened. Two weeks later, when I arrived in Colombia and began my media blitz, they read an article about me offering cash for pieces, so they decided to come forward and get the money. We are all glad they did, they now have money to pay hospital bills and I have the main mass of the Cali Colombia meteorite fall.

I bought this stone from Roberto Timote and collected pieces of the broken ceramic ceiling tile damaged by the meteorite impact.

Click here to see the El Pais newspaper article about the recovery of this meteorite. NEWSPAPER

 

This photo taken from inside the home, shows the large hole created by the meteorite impact, and also shows that it impacted a spot exactly on top of the wall. The stone did not come into the home but bounced back up and remained on the rooftop. The family was standing and sitting right below the point of impact, and were showered with debris, but had the wall not been there, someone would likely have been injured or killed by the meteorite.

 

 

 

Robert Ward is seen here crawling around on top of the roof looking for meteorite fragments. The white piece of material covers the hole where the meteorite impacted. Robert was using a magnet to search for small fragments of this meteorite, and he found one nicely fusion crusted piece.

 

 

 

Here you can see me holding the meteorite. It was picked up just to the right of me, where the man's foot is. It had bounced or rolled down to that spot, ~1 meter from the impact point.

 

 

 This is the lucky homeowner Roberto Timote, holding the meteorite that nearly killed him! He was standing directly under the wall in the doorway, listening to his wife on the phone when the meteorite impacted. He was covered with roofing debris after the impact, and had to wash pieces out of his hair. From the impact to where he was standing just below it, I have little doubt that he would have been killed by the meteorite except for the wall which prevented it from entering the home.