The cause of an extremely loud booming noise that was heard over a wide area in western Conecuh County and eastern Monroe County Friday night remained a mystery earlier this week.At 11:33 p.m. Friday night, an extremely loud “boom” was heard by witnesses from Repton to Monroeville and as far south as the small communities of Goodway and Wildfork in Monroe County.
Margie Peacock of Repton was among one of the first people to say she heard the sound.
“I heard it too,” she said. “All the way over here on Highway 41 in Repton. It wasn’t a sonic boom, sounded more like an explosion.”
Peacock noted that the she believes that the sound came from somewhere southwest of Repton.
Michael Brooks of Monroeville said that he heard it when he went outside to check his boat batteries. After hearing the sound, he went inside and turned on his police scanner, but never heard anything about it on his radio. He noted that he thought that he heard a similar sound maybe 20 minutes later.
Monroe Journal reporter Josh Dewberry, who lives in the Wildfork community near Excel, said that he also heard the strange sound and another man, who lives further south in the Goodway community, said that the noise was so loud that he heard it while he was taking a shower.
Conecuh County E911 Director Johnny Brock told The Courant on Monday that he reviewed 911 tapes as well as recordings of police radio traffic from that night and 911 callers and police made no mention of the boom sound.
The Courant also made an attempt to contact every volunteer fire chief in Conecuh County on Monday regarding the strange noise and none of them that spoke to The Courant reported knowing about the noise.
Numerous theories circulated earlier this week about the cause of the unexplained sound, but as of Monday afternoon the exact cause remained unknown.
Mobile Press-Register reporter Mark Kent, who is arguably best known for his astronomy news feature in that paper every Sunday, said that the noise was probably a sonic boom caused by an F/A-18 Hornet fighter jet flying out of the Pensacola Naval Air Station (NAS).
“They’re not supposed to do that (cause sonic booms) over land, but they occasionally do,” Kent said.
The Courant contacted officials at Pensacola NAS and Eglin Air Force Base in Niceville, Fla. on Monday, and officials at Pensacola NAS said that no jets from their facility were in the air in the vicinity of Conecuh or Monroe County at that time of night on Friday.
“We had nothing in the air at that time that would have caused a sonic boom,” Public Affairs Officer Harry White said. “And we’ve really got nothing in our training pipeline that could do that.”
White noted that the airfield at Pensacola NAS closed at 11 p.m. on Friday and with the exception of a few transport planes, none of their training aircraft were in the air after 11 p.m.
A request for information about flight activity near Conecuh County out of Eglin Air Force Base on Friday night had not been returned as of press time.
One man suggested that the sound was a land oil crew setting off underground explosions as part of a seismological test. Others say that this is unlikely because these types of tests aren’t typically conducted at that time of night.
In the end, The Courant is encouraging its readers to contact the newspaper with their accounts of the noise or if they know its cause.
The Courant can be reached by phone at 251-578-1492 or by email at courantsports@earthlink.net. To contact The Courant by mail, write The Evergreen Courant, ATTN: Lee Peacock, P.O. Box 440, Evergreen, AL 36401.
No comments:
Post a Comment