Savoie, France · 1997-04-10 · from the GEIPAN archive
White light in Savoie, France
In the night of April 10 to 11, 1997, a witness is awakened by a very bright white glow followed by a firework-like noise. Going to the window, he sees that the roof of his car, parked in the courtyard of his house, is on fire. The witness immediately calls the police.
On site, the police and firefighters collect samples. The laboratory of the University of Savoy, which examines the samples, identifies basalt and states that it is probably a meteorite.
A specialist who rushed to the scene the next day has strong doubts about this hypothesis. In addition, a manager of the mineralogy laboratory at the Natural History Museum in Paris, having been able to examine some debris, also rules out the hypothesis of a meteorite fall.
The SEPRA, alerted, was able to collect three samples for analysis at the Bioinformatics Laboratory in Tours (see attached document).
Other later analyses carried out by the central laboratory of the CNRS in Solaize will show that the samples contain components (sodium, magnesium, potassium, sulfur, and carbon) generally part of the composition of marine or terrestrial flares (see AFP dispatch of April 29, 1997 sent to the SEPRA): these latter analyses definitively rule out the hypothesis of a meteorite fall.
The GEIPAN classifies this case as A: vehicle fire due to a terrestrial flare. The owner of the partially burned vehicle filed a complaint with the police. However, the police report was not sent to the SEPRA.
Today, without direct testimony and without access to the witness, the GEIPAN does not conduct the investigation. We nevertheless publish this case because significant work was carried out and led to a conclusion. This case also indicates that direct access to the witness would very likely have made it possible to better channel and optimize investigation efforts.
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This is an official case file of GEIPAN, the French space agency's unidentified aerospace phenomena office, machine translated from French. The original text and the full investigation file are at geipan.fr. We reproduce it with thanks and remove anything on request.
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