![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/copy-of-o-oamaruaerial1anew-jpg.webp\")
A red fireball was seen crashing into the water off the coast of the village of Kakanui near Oamaru. Photo: Hamish MacLean <\/p>\nA large-scale rescue response team turned out in minutes after what appeared to be an aircraft crashed\u00a0into the sea off the coast of Oamaru.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After an hour of quick and widespread investigation, it turned out the alleged aircraft was actually a \u201cfireball\u201d falling from space, Senior Sergeant Iain Notman, of Dunedin, said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At 6pm on Sunday, a member of the public called police to report what they thought was an aircraft on fire crashing\u00a0into the ocean near Kakanui, south of Oamaru.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This kicked off\u00a0\u201clarge scale, immediate, and extensive\u201d inquiries.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dunedin Air Traffic Control, multiple Oamaru-based\u00a0flight schools\u00a0and\u00a0commercial helicopter companies were contacted and said their\u00a0aircraft were accounted for.<\/p>\n
Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand and Maritime New Zealand had no activations, and Flight Radar showed no flights in the area.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Southern police then co-ordinated with the national centre and discovered there had been multiple calls from Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin all describing a red ball of light falling with what looked to be smoke training behind, Snr Sgt Notman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The consensus was that\u00a0it was an atmospheric event down the east coast of New Zealand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Astronomer Dr Ian Griffin said it was most likely a meteor entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A red fireball was seen crashing into the water off the coast of the village of Kakanui near Oamaru. Photo: Hamish MacLean <\/p>\n
\u201cA fireball is a\u00a0rock from space that\u2019s burning up high over the Earth \u2026 the really bright fireballs are caused by slightly bigger rocks.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Dr Griffin said it was similar to a shooting star, but bigger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
laine.priestley@odt.co.nz<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A large-scale rescue response team turned out in minutes after what appeared to be an aircraft crashed\u00a0into the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":546836,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[111,43,139,69],"class_list":["post-546835","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-zealand","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546835","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=546835"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/546835\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/546836"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=546835"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=546835"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=546835"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}