As an inflatable emergency slide fell from an airplane and through the clear blue sky toward her house, Laura Devitt, was staring at a computer screen in her upstairs office, and her parents were feeding her son, a toddler, blueberries in the next room.
The slide landed Monday afternoon with a boom as it clipped the edge of her roof, damaging shingles, a window screen and a downspout before landing on a raised bed of cherry tomatoes and adjacent lawn in the backyard of her Norridge home.
“Oh gosh, if it had hit even just inches closer, it would have been in the room I work in or where my son was eating lunch,” said Devitt, 36. “The police and other authorities said that because of the distance it was falling it most certainly would have gone through the roof of the house.”
The impact happened around 12:15 p.m. at her two-story brick home in the 4700 block of North Chester Avenue — about 2 miles east of O’Hare International Airport.
The slide somehow detached from a United Airlines flight — a Boeing 767 from Switzerland that landed safely. Upon landing, maintenance workers discovered the aircraft was missing a slide, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
“I’ve never heard that loud of a sound before,” Laura Devitt said. “My first thought was that it could have been a terrible car accident, but it didn’t sound like that, to be honest.”
She walked outside to find the slide deflated and crumpled — but didn’t realize what it was at first.
“It just looked like a huge tarp,” she said.
Her husband, Patrick Devitt, 36, arrived home a few minutes later from work and called 911 as she put her son down for a nap.
Soon, four police cars arrived, followed by representatives from the FAA, the Chicago Department of Aviation, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board and representatives from United Airlines and the local alderperson’s office. News helicopters and neighbors from her cul de sac hovered.
Before authorities arrived, Patrick Devitt, with the help of his father-in-law, dragged the heavy slide past his son’s tiny backyard plastic slide to the front of the house.
“We’re all OK. I feel lucky. But I was definitely a little rattled, and the more you think about it, it’s like: You know the airplane industry is just such a regulated industry, so for something to fall off a plane and fall into your yard is a really rattling thing, and the ‘what ifs’ take over,” Laura Devitt said.
Laura Devitt, the director of a nonprofit, and her husband, who works for a company that sells manufacturing parts, bought their home in 2020. They previously lived in Portage Park.
“When we moved here we got so used to being in the flight path of planes that we don’t’ really think much of it now, apart from the fact that my son loves watching for planes. But, no, you never think that part of the plane is going to be in your yard,” she said.
Investigators carted the slide away. The airline said the flight crew was not aware the chute had fallen until after they landed. The FAA said it was investigating the incident.
Worries about filing an insurance claim to cover damage to their home will wait a few days.
Police officers told Laura Devitt that they recalled only one other similar instance in the area in recent years.
In January 2021 an airplane tire fell from the sky and landed in the yard of a Jefferson Park home. No one was injured.
One positive take-away from the strange experience — Laura Devitt said she now has an ace up her sleeve the next time she plays Two Truths and a Lie.
Contributing: Mary Norkol
