Toilet ice rips hole in couple's roof

CHINO, Calif. - An elderly couple believe a chunk of blue ice from the holding tank of an aircraft toilet ripped a hole in their roof and destroyed a bed.

William McElroy was watching a movie with his wife, Evelyn, when the ice crashed into the house Wednesday night.

"It was a huge crash. It shook the whole building, but we thought it was a car," McElroy said. The couple went outside to investigate but found nothing, so they returned to finish watching the movie.

They didn't discover the chunk of ice on the bed and the 2-foot-wide hole in the ceiling until Thursday morning.

"I think we had somebody extra looking over us," Evelyn McElroy said.

Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Ian Gregor said Thursday if the offending chunk of ice is from an airplane, then it is likely the cause of a leak in a holding tank of the aircraft's bathroom.

Blue ice occurs when waste leaks from a plane's bathroom onto the outside of the plane and freezes at high altitudes. The liquid begins to thaw as the plane descends, Gregor said.