Surprise Out of the Blue Chills One Family’s Day

An airmail, special-delivery “package” nearly razed the roof at the Padillas’ house Tuesday night.

There was no return address on the unwanted bundle, but smelly blue clues pointed to the not-so-friendly skies.

Juan Padilla, 39, said he was watching television with his two daughters and a friend at about 8 p.m. when his West Los Angeles bungalow started to shake.

Like a bolt from the wild blue yonder, something burst through the roof, splintered rafters and punched out a chunk of plaster in a bedroom closet.

“I went outside and there was ice on the front porch,” Padilla said.

A two-foot-square hole was in the roof of the Granville Avenue home, and melting ice discolored the ceiling of his daughters’ room.

“We were all kind of shook up,” he said.

The ice was part of a 1 1/2-by-2 1/2-foot chunk of what is euphemistically known as “blue ice.” Several large pieces were in the attic.

At the time, Padilla said he had never heard of blue ice, so he did what any sensible person with a homeowner’s insurance policy would do: He put the frozen matter in plastic bags and stored it in the freezer.

Since then, he has found out that “blue ice” is a block of frozen waste products from an airplane toilet.

Sometimes the sewage, colored blue by a chemical in the water, seeps through a faulty seal and collects on the outside of the plane. Then, when the air temperature rises, it can drop off and interrupt a quiet evening at home.

It’s not an everyday occurrence, but this is at least the seventh fall of blue ice in Southern California in the past two years, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.

Usually, the waste is siphoned from the plane with a hose--after the plane lands.

Finding the offending airplane, with thousands of commercial flights over the Los Angeles Basin each day, is virtually impossible, FAA spokesman Fred O’Donnell said. By the time the plane lands, he said, there are no telltale signs that the seal has leaked, and no distinctive odor.

O’Donnell offered one piece of advice: The blue ice could pose a health hazard. “It’s just not the kind of thing you want in the refrigerator,” he said.

Padilla thanks his lucky stars that no one was killed or injured.

But he is also wondering if it was a quirk of fate, or his personal karma, that frozen waste matter, blue or otherwise, landed on his roof.

“It must have been one of my unhappy customers,” he joked.

Padilla is a plumber.