(Prior to 2225L - Radio scanner traffic indicates an ordinary night of activity for local police, sheriff, EMS, and fire units.)

Begin Gisted Highlights of Transmissions:
2225L Howard County (HC) Dispatch "Attn all Howard County units; 9-1-1 board just lit up with incoming calls; pls stand by."

" " "Possible shots fired or an explosion." (several UI HC units)

"Explosion shook my car west northwest of station." "Big boom." "Huge."

(UI Kokomo PD units) "Possibly fireworks downtown." "Something big exploded."

2226L HC Dispatch "We're getting calls from everywhere on a huge explosion." (These types of transmissions continue for the next several minutes.)

2230L HC Dispatch "Indiana State Police say possible plane down; no location yet."

2231L FD Dispatch [all call] "Attn all units [roll call] west of US 31 and 300 North, possible aircraft down."

223530L " " "Tipton County is requesting multiple fire departments from Howard County - they have a huge debris cloud or field." FD Dispatch [all call] "Aircraft down, aircraft down; possible aircraft down."

2237L " " [all call] "Assist Tipton County, aircraft down, west of US 31 on 300N." 2241L UI Watch Commander "Contact the base [Grissom ARB]; see what they had on radar."

2244L EMS Dispatch "Go direct (landline) with ##### [Tipton County EMS] - he has new coordinates - 3 miles West of us at [garbled/blocked] ...50 or 60 West and 300 North."

2245L Tipton County Dispatch "Engine 31, be advised - extend to 5760 West on 300 North."

2246L UI Watch Commander "Okay, since that's the only known location of debris, you wanna set up a perimeter back to the nearest crossroads."

2247L UI Fire Unit "We're on scene."

2250L Air 10 (to Tipton Co) "Have you contacted FAA or Black Line?"

2251L UI "See a fire northwest of us near the Howard/Tipton county line; can advise no further at this time."

2253L Tipton Co (to Air 10) "Can you do an air search, see if you can locate anything from the air?" Air 10 "Will advise."

2254L UI Dep Sheriff "County, I'm going to [frequency change] Ops One." UI County Dispatch "With all the confusion, I'd appreciate you staying up on the main channel."

2255L UI Watch Commander "County, be advised we have multiple county and state officers; we are going to stage and do a search pattern to the north and west of this location." [or north and west of US31 and 300 North]

2257L UI Dep Sheriff "Be advised; talked to a gentleman who saw it come through the air; he advised it was NOT a ball of fire; it was breaking apart, whatever it was, and it was about seven miles west of where we were just at."

HC Watch Commander "County, be advised, have all our units obligated to Tipton County switch over to [frequency change] Incident One, and that way we'll take this off main dispatch."

HC Dispatch "Attention all Howard County units assisting Tipton County; switch to Incident One, Incident One. All regular traffic can stay on Sheriff's Dispatch."

2258L HC Dispatch "Affirmative; be advised all their planes are accounted for."

UI Sheriff's Deputy "OK, were they training in the area? Several of the residents in the area report they saw planes they thought were from Grissom in the area."

HC Dispatch "Be advised they told me all their planes were accounted for 30 minutes prior to this happening. Their last plane had came in 30 minutes before this had happened."

2259L UI Sheriff's Deputy "Be advised, tune in to [TV] Channel 13; my wife just called and said that national media is saying something just happened north of the north Chrysler plant."

2300L HC Watch Commander "OK, the news we're getting is that it's gonna be between [Hwys] 28 and 31." IEditor's Note - More units noted switching to "Incident One" and changing frequency to an unrecorded channel.) Kokomo PD Dispatch [partly blocked transmission] ". . . and then lost it at that point in time."

UI Kokomo PD Unit "10-4, Kokomo, I observed that myself." UI Sheriff's Deputy "From all the witnesses' accounts, it appears to be somewhere South and West of [County Road] 500 North in Tipton county."

2302L HC Dispatch "We've been making every attempt to contact the airport with no answer." UI Watch Commander "Disregard that; contact Carroll County; just had another witness report it's going to be closer to [Hwys] 26 & 29."

2303L UI Sheriff's Deputy "I've had two subjects come up and confirm your original theory about the flare incident."

2305L HC Dispatch [partly blocked] ". . . County; they have had no reports of this incident." UI "Could you TX my cell phone, reference your situation out there. A guy I work with saw something in the sky."

[Editor's Note - Lots of cellphone numbers now getting passed by multiple responding parties.]

230905L UI Sheriff's Deputy "I just got off the TX with Grissom security forces. They said they have no military in the air, and they have not had any military in the air."

230020L HC Dispatch "Sir, can you 10-9 [repeat last] your last that was for Howard County?"

UI Sheriff's Deputy "County, it was actually for [unit] 33; I know he's gonna have the helicopter come up in a little bit. Advise him that if he didn't catch my traffic that Grissom just advised me their security forces advised that there's not any military aircraft that's been up or doing anything in that area because they just contacted Ft Wayne as well, just to make sure."

UI Sheriff's Deputy "Loud and clear; loud and clear, thank you."

UI Sheriff's Deputy "Be advised, we're going back north up into Howard County because we've had different witnesses say they heard a plane fly over their houses; we're going up there and see what we can find out."

UI Sheriff's Deputy "Clear. I'm beginning to think we oughta have either Tri-Central or Western activate their football field lights and let that be our jumpoff zone for air support."

2312L UI Sheriff's Deputy "County, Mr ##### also said that, after the explosion, he looked out the west windows of his house and he could see fireballs, he said."

2314L HC Dispatch "Be advised we just got off the phone with Indiana State Police. They are calling off their portion of it, however I believe there was supposed to be an ISP unit who was meeting you at [Hwys] 28 and 31."

2315L UI Sheriff's Deputy [party blocked] " . . . that this could be a astrological [astronomical] event."

231510L HC Dispatch "Indiana State Police was just notifying us of the same thing. They said they spoke to a meteorologist who said there were several meteor showers in the last few days."

2316L Engine 31 "Do you want us to continue to search or Signal 9, or what do you want us to do?"

UI FD Dispatch "My advice would be to continue search; we've received enough calls that would say something occurred of a spectacular event; we have no idea where; all of our reports are sporadic on where it's coming through."

2317L UI EMS Unit "Word is right now that this may be just a meteorite entering the atmosphere, however I don't believe that."

2319L UI Sheriff's Deputy "I've just had a witness, law enforcement on top of that, the description of what they're puttin' out could, more than likely be of astrological [astronomical] incident."

UI Sheriff's Deputy "The sound part of it does make a lot of sense, with that explosion."

2323L UI Watch Commander "We're pretty confident this is gonna be an astrological [astronomical] event. Just leave two units out to patrol."

2324L UI FD Unit "I don't believe we're gonna find anything; if we were, we would have already."

2328L UI Sheriff's Deputy "We're at Deffenbaugh [Street} and about 440 West. Uh, they've seen exactly the same thing. What it sounds like is that it was traveling East to West and disintegrated someplace West of us between here and [Hwy] 29." UI Watch Commander "I've got another unit pulling up with me now; they had the same incident last night north of Logansport in Cass County." " " "Go ahead and scale back all law enforcement."

2335L UI FD Unit [partly blocked] " . . . stating that their house shook at 200 North and [Hwy] 19, and they're wondering what's going on." (Editor's Note - This location is well East by at least a dozen miles from the primary search area.)

2336L " " "We're staging in Curtisville, however we have no debris field, we have no information that anything's burning on the ground; Howard County is scaling back, and they will have two officers available if we locate something. State Police is kinda in the same mode; I believe that we should start scaling back, and send fire units home; we may keep one unit in the area in case we get any other reports to be checked out."

2337L " " [partly blocked] " . . . from the air, not from the ground up. It was from the ground down [corrects self] from the air down; also Cass County had a similar incident in the last 48 hours; believe it came from an aircraft. We're believing at this point it was either a Grissom aircraft that fired a flare, or something meteorological."

2346L UI Watch Commander "Advise all non-Tipton county units they can go 10-8 [back in service] back to their counties."

2356L Tipton Watch Co "Suspending all operations in reference to this call."

2359L UI HC FD Dispatch "Report of fire in a field behind Pleasant Drive at Bradley Rd. [SW of Kokomo; north of HC/Tipton Co line.]

0002L " " "Witnesses report smelling a [metallic] odor from field."

0005L UI HC FD Unit "On scene." [Nil heard after this transmission, re - this reported fire in field.)

End Gisted Highlights of Transmissions

READ COMMENTARY JUNE 30, 2008 MARKS THE 25th ANNIVERSARY OF DEB's INITIAL ENCOUNTER. Deb remarks about this and many other things in her BLOG.

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