Meteor Shower Causes Panic In New England

POSTED: 9:34 pm CDT April 24, 2005
UPDATED: 9:37 pm CDT April 24, 2005

BOSTON -- A meteor shower on Sunday sparked a flurry of frantic phone calls to police departments across New England.

The calls came from people who saw bright lights moving in the sky, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Holly Baker.

Baker said the meteor shower was seen as far north as Portland, Maine, and as far south as Long Island.

Witnesses apparently mistook the meteor shower for a plane crashing near New London, Conn., but no aircraft are unaccounted for.

A spokesman for the Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency said the bright lights apparently came from the Lyrid meteor shower, which was was scheduled to be visible to the naked eye from Wednesday through Monday.

Police and Coast Guard officials in Connecticut said there were reports of everything from meteors and missiles to multicolored objects in the sky.

Firefighters in Branford, Conn., responded to several reports of a possible plane crash in Long Island Sound in the Thimble Island area. But a search did not turn up anything and was called off at about 8:50 p.m.