Susan Allen and her son was just driving home from lunch with her mother in the city of Kelowna, British Columbia, when she pulled up at a red light.
It was a cloudless summer afternoon, so the car’s windows were down and sunroof open when it was abruptly deluged with what Allan described as a “pile of mud falling from the sky”.
The pair were quickly overwhelmed by a foul smell, which confirmed that it was not mud that had struck them, but liquid human faeces. “It looked like slops of wheaty, lumpy poo,” Allen told the Guardian.
She quickly concluded that the brown liquid had fallen from a plane as it landed at the airport nearby. “We were both pretty upset. I cried and couldn’t sleep until four in the morning,” she said.
Transport Canada – which oversees aviation in the country – is investigating the 9 May incident, declaring that it “takes all reports of possible debris coming from aircraft very seriously”.
Allan eventually managed to clean out her car with the help of family, but the incident left her with an eye infection which her doctor said was the result of “being inundated with overhead sewage”.
Allan’s suspicion that the deluge of waste came from a plane has been supported by experts.
It is not uncommon for human waste to fall from planes in the form of hazardous ice chunks – called “blue ice”. But the environmental scientist Robert Young told the Kelowna Capital News that the incident could have begun with a leak from a plane’s plumbing system which froze on the underside of the fuselage.
“If it started as being kind of a ‘poopsicle’ on the bottom of a plane, then it could easily thaw and become liquid as it came down.” Young said.
It is unclear how common such episodes are, but Allen’s traumatic story has prompted others to come forward: three days later, another car was struck with similar waste.
Transport Canada told the Guardian it does not compile statistics on these types of incidences.
The Kelowna international airport previously told reporters it was not aware of a flight in the area at the time of the reported incidences.
Allan said it was the most disgusting moment of her life. “It’s definitely not something anybody should experience. Ever.”