UFO' seen in Rexton

REXTON - It was a normal Monday night for 56-year-old Daniel Cormier of Rexton as he prepared to head to his night shift work as a truck driver. That is, until he looked up and noticed something far from normal in the night skyline.

"I looked up and something came up in the air and I said 'look at that' to my friend that was there," Cormier explains. "I said it's kind of a balloon and there was fire in it . . . I thought it was a balloon there, and there was somebody inside it or something. It started to come down and was coming down pretty fast and I thought it was going to crash."

Cormier described the unidentified flying object as white in colour and said he could easily see the fire against the late night sky. The object quickly descended to the ground in a yard nearby where Cormier lives in Rexton's Senior Housing complex. Cormier and his friend then went to put out the fire that was still burning from the approximately three-foot long object.

At this point, Cormier thought nothing more of the incident and went off to work. However, he wasn't the only resident who caught a glimpse of the mystery object in the sky, as police and fire departments were called and arrived on the scene around 11 p.m. to identify the cause for concern.

"It wasn't a UFO sighting -- it was one of those Chinese flying lanterns. They just kind of look like a weather balloon somewhat; they have a fuel source in the bottom and you light the fuel in the bottom and it's kind of like a sock," said Rexton Fire Chief Brent Goodwin.

"It floats through the air and it's supposed to float for miles. That's what it was. It must have hit a power line or whatever and then it fell down and it burned."

Fortunately, the lantern landed in an open yard and no damage was done. The fire chief said the incident could have turned out a lot worse.

"It seems to me that these could be hazardous. They're not supposed to come back down to earth lit, but this one obviously did. If they got into something that was flammable like tall grass or in the woods or whatever, it could be a dangerous thing," Goodwin said.

In the end, the only damage done seemed to be a brief scare at the seniors' complex where at least one resident thought the problem was serious enough to call in the authorities.

"They were concerned. You see something floating down from the heavens, from the sky, that's on fire -- it definitely scared them," Goodwin said.

Vida Finno, a resident of the seniors' complex, said the lantern looked "like the moon falling down to hit the earth."

Flying lanterns, also known as sky lanterns or Khoom Fay in the Asian culture, were used next to fireworks in traditional Asian festivals for thousands of years. They can fly to more than 1,000 metres in altitude and are still quite popular in celebrations in Europe and Asia.

The lanterns don't seem to be nearly as common in New Brunswick -- at least not as potential fire hazards. Both Doug Hamer of the Riverview Fire Department and Don McCabe of the Moncton Fire Department said they had never heard of the lanterns, nor of them causing a fire in the past.

While the mystery object in the sky was unfamiliar to local fire chiefs, it's a far too common occurrence for those who find themselves looking to the sky for UFOs.

"They are a big pain in the neck, frankly, for those of us in ufology," said Stanton Friedman of Fredericton, who is the president of the UFO Research Institute. "This isn't a little balloon . . . It's something much more impressive. Not so much around here, but Europe has particularly had them in heavily populated areas with certain ethnic groups.

"From time to time different things become the primary target that is things that people see that they say 'what the heck is that.' This one has been a leading contender for the last couple of years."

While a nuisance to some and a cause for concern for others, Cormier is just glad no one was hurt in the village's unexpected lantern adventure.

"I thought it was a balloon and there was somebody inside of it or something. It looked big with the fire in it and when it came down I said there can't be anybody in that because he would have hurt himself. It went down pretty fast," he said.