Who's pooping on people?

[seniorpumpkin]

http://www.timescolonist.com/news/b-c/a ... 1.23324925

VANCOUVER — Susan Allan and her son were driving through Kelowna’s downtown core after coming back from Peachland on a mild afternoon with her sunroof down — but stopping at a red light would change the course of her day and weeks to come.

“This is where we were inundated with poop,” she said. “It was coming from the sky, covered my car, and got in my face and in my mouth.”
The brownish discharge splattered across the entire hood and back seats of Allan’s car, as well as the cars behind her, and in adjacent lanes. And the smell was horrid.

“You could tell it was feces because it smelt like poop. But there was also a hint of chlorine. It was the strangest smell.”

When Allan managed to look up, she saw a large plane flying overhead. Once the light turned green, the pair rushed to a nearby gas station to wash the particles off themselves and their car.

A visit to the doctor the following morning for a swollen, red eye revealed that Allan had also contracted a conjunctivitis infection.

He told me I had human feces in my eye,” she said. “I’m 100 per cent positive it was from an airplane.”

Allan continues to use eye drops to treat her lasting sting from the May 9 incident. Three other residents across B.C. have recounted similar experiences since she went public with her story.

All four accounts happened in the span of four days, May 9 to 12.

Transport Canada has launched an investigation into two separate incidents in Kelowna.

In an email, the department said it takes all reports of possible debris from aircraft very seriously and that it’s possible a valve malfunction allowed the leakage of “blue ice” — a term used for frozen waste enclosed in sewage holding tanks aboard aircraft.

If the liquid seeps and sticks to the outside of the aircraft, it could detach from the plane during the flight, either in a solid or melted state, the department said.

Other residents whose cars were showered by pungent waste said it’s difficult to imagine it coming from anything but an airplane.

On that same afternoon of May 9, Ron Ackerson pulled into a rest stop along the highway while going home to Williams Lake after a doctor’s appointment.

“All of a sudden, it’s just brown. The whole grill, the hood, the windshield, and even some on the tail gate. I thought: ‘What the frig is going on here?’ ”

Ackerson said it was a clear sky, and he didn’t manage to catch a glimpse of anything above.

“But there’s no way in this world there’s a bird big enough in this day and age that could crap that much. And they sure all wouldn’t be crapping at the same time,” he said.

Ecologist and ornithologists seem to agree.

David Lank, a research associate with Simon Fraser University’s biology department and centre for wildlife ecology pointed to two features of the discharge.

“First of all, it would mostly be white if it was a bird,” he said.

“And the amount — it’s too much even for a flock of geese all pooping simultaneously.”

In another incident in Kelowna, Brett Yates found brown splatters on his car parked outside his home. He also found the same liquid dispersed diagonally across three other vehicles in the neighbourhood.

“It smelt pretty disgusting,” Yates said. “I had no explanation for it. It puzzled me for a day and then I put it out of my mind until I started seeing stories about other incidents.”

A mass amount of fecal matter affecting multiple people was also cited by Karen Copeland, who was sitting inside her vehicle with her daughter in Abbotsford.

“It’s like when you drive under a tree and there’s water on it — that’s what it sounded like,” Copeland said. “I looked around and there were four cars that were hit as well.”

[goingnowherefast]

Well that's just shitty luck!

[PositiveRate27]

Swoop?

[confusedalot]

Well, I do remember being in the bathroom of a european train when I was 8 years old, and you did in fact poop on the tracks.

Never encountered an airplane where you pooped into the sky though.

And transport is going to launch an investigation. The public service has become a fucking joke.

[Xonga013]

Swoop?

Spoop?

[pelmet]

As a former baggage handler, there were a few guys who got covered in effluent from the aircraft waste system. Usually when pulling the t-handle after hooking up the hose didn't open the valve to release the contents.

Most of the aircraft serviced where I worked were 737's(although we did everything from Metro's to 747's). First the thin aluminum access cover that is streamlined with the fuselage skin was opened for access. Then the thick metal hatch cover was unlatched and the hose attached prior to pulling the T-handle to release the effluent. But make sure stand aside when opening the hatch as there could be a minor leak from the upstream valve resulting in a cup or so of the blue fluid blue fluid spilling out. When you pull the handle to open the upstream valve, you can tell it has opened based on the shaking of the hose as the blue fluid mixed with solid floating objects rushes through it. The fuller the toilet, the longer the hose vibrates. Once the hose has stopped vibrating, all contents have been removed from the aircraft.

Of course a nasty bugger from a pervious city could have perhaps just pulled the T-handle at the previous stop letting all contents flow down to the outer metal hatch cover waiting waiting to really pour out when you open it. Or perhaps the upstream valve was frozen and you removed the hose to investigate after repeatedly pulling the handle. I never had the pleasure of servicing a Dash-8 but was told of one guy who did for a charter flight and ended up having to remove turds from his shirt pockets.

Servicing lavs was just one of many different jobs a baggage handler would do at my company and we were busy enough that it would have a dedicated person assigned to it for the shift. A nice set of thick orange rubber gloves were provided in the lav truck which always seemed to be damp inside and left your hands smelling like the blue pellet packages that got put into the toilet once the system had been refilled. Then we would remove the gloves, parked the truck and do the other job assigned to the lav guy. Get the potable water truck and with now ungloved hands, hook up the drinking water hose to the aircraft and fill the aircraft. Onboard water anyone?

Ahhh, the good old days when one could load and pushback some cool airplanes and hope to fly some of them someday.

[pelmet]

And transport is going to launch an investigation. The public service has become a fucking joke.

A large frozen chunk of ice falling from the sky can kill someone. It has knocked an engine off a 727 before and put a hole in someone's roof. I little more serious than one imagining something not much worse that being pooped on by a bird. Like parts falling off an aircraft, this is something that is taken seriously.

https://www.google.ca/search?q=northwes ... JOb99KBPhM:

Blue ice incidents...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_ice_(aviation)

[AirFrame]

Transport and others keep referring to blue ice that occasionally falls from aircraft, but anyone who's seen the pictures of these vehicles can tell you that there's nothing blue about these incidents. It's most definitely brown, and liquid.

[all_ramped_up]

While conducting a post flight walkaround on a Global Express I noticed one panel had what looked like mud streaking around it. Didn't touch it obviously but as I don't have the GLEX type course, I conferred with the lead AME... yup... it was poop as I suspected.

Glad I wasn't assigned that snag. haha

[pelmet]

Transport and others keep referring to blue ice that occasionally falls from aircraft, but anyone who's seen the pictures of these vehicles can tell you that there's nothing blue about these incidents. It's most definitely brown, and liquid.

You might not be fully aware of all the finer details of of being the lav guy. When the aircraft departs, it has fresh water in the lav system and(at least when I was doing the job at my particular location), a couple of blue packages thrown into and flushed down the toilet. These blue things were a thin square plastic(more like saran wrap) package with blue powder inside. The covering breaks down in the water releasing the blue powder. So the aircraft departs with plenty of blue fluid. Depending on use, bluishness may change colour depending on what is added to it and in what particular manner. However, there can be plenty of blue fluid left after a flight....or maybe not.

Ahhh..the good old days.

Anybody interested in catering stories?

[AirFrame]

Thanks @pelmet, I didn't know that... I always thought the "used" side would be blue, but hadn't thought through the colour science of what's happening... Of course if you add a lot of brown to anything, it's going to end up browner than it was.

[MZUNGO]

as someone who has had the enviable task of dumping the cart after a few lavs have been serviced, I can assure you that what comes out is very blue.
I havent seen any of the pictures so I cant make much of a guess as to what happened. but you would normally need 2 separate items to fail/not secured. some aircraft have 3 .

[AirFrame]

@MZUNGO, what was shown on the news was photos of very brown spots on cars. No visible blue. Maybe there is something else going on, or maybe someone forgot to add the blue...

[JohnnyHotRocks]

It was bird crap. People on the news say there is no way birds could crap that much. The side of my garage proves otherwise. Looks exactly like the brown drops on buddies car.

[AirFrame]

It was bird crap. People on the news say there is no way birds could crap that much. The side of my garage proves otherwise. Looks exactly like the brown drops on buddies car.

This would have needed a bird the size of Sesame Street's main avian character, and he'd need a large meal of dodgy curry to make enough to cause this mess in one pass.