Although a rash of UFO sightings reported recently would seem to be evidence of a major wave of unexplained paranormal activity, at least one researcher has warned investigators to check their facts before jumping to conclusions.

Early in the night of September 1, dozens of people from Canada to Arizona saw glowing trails in the sky that occasionally appeared to break apart and fly in different directions. Several of the objects reportedly behaved as though "maneuvering," even doubling back in at least one case.

The phone lines of both the National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC) and Art Bell's Coast to Coast talk-radio program were jammed with sightings, prompting Bell to classify the incident as "a major UFO event."

Shortly after the wave of sightings began at around 9:00 p.m. PDT (midnight EDT), reports started trickling in that sections of Arizona and Nevada had been thrown into darkness by power failures. Bell, who broadcasts out of the town of Pahrump, NV, was caught in the blackout and told his listeners that he would finish his show on emergency backup power.

The flood of reports buried NUFORC Director Peter Davenport in information, leaving him too busy to comment days after. By Friday, he expressed hopes that he would be able to post a statement on the event at some point.

Still, at least one UFO researcher, Jerry Rolwes, was already making calls. Rolwes, the director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON)'s Washington State section, quickly ascertained that the Air Force had received no word of sightings in eastern Washington. This freed him up to do the investigative groundwork that Davenport was still too swamped to handle.

NORAD Air Force Public Affairs told Rolwes that the sightings were of Russian rocket debris crashing to Earth.

"The bottom line is this," he said in a report to various UFO media organizations. "It was a spectacular event, but anything but a major UFO event. Major Nouis reported that it was a Russian rocket body item, NORAD catalog item number 25761."

According to Rolwes, Nouis said the object was part of the motor of a SL 12 rocket launched February 28 and forecast to come back down sometime around September 1-3. Its high reentry speed -- estimated at about 17,000 miles per hour (27,000 km per hour) -- was likely the cause of the explosive highway "crash" reported on the border between Utah and Nevada.

The catalog of projected space junk reentries is open to public access. The U.S. Space Command makes a truncated version of the list, the "Satellite Boxscore," available on the internet.

As for the reports of heightened military activity, the Oregon Air National Guard told Rolwes that the 142^nd tactical fighter wing based in Portland did in fact launch six F-15 jets shortly before 9:00 p.m. PDT. However, the military contact characterized the flight as part of a standard two-week night training run announced in advance to the local press, not a pursuit of unidentified objects.

Rolwes -- a retired air force lieutenant colonel in his own right -- criticized both Bell and Davenport for not "checking out the facts" before evaluating the event.

"It just didn't take that much to make these telephone calls to the active and Air National Guard USAF organizations," he said. "I have done this to attempt to prove a point. Before everyone starts making assumptions about USAF organizations, just pick up the phone and call these folks."

For its part, NUFORC did not immediately release any official statement on the event, "major" or otherwise.

Rolwes did not have an explanation for the reports of power failures that knocked the electricity out for Bell and others in the region on the night of the sightings, but was again critical of the apparent lack of effort to contact the power companies directly.

With notorious sightings reported against the backdrop of the 1965 "Great Blackout" of the Eastern United States and Canada, blackouts are a traditional component of UFO mythology. Still, Arizona Public Service, cited by industry sources as having "some outages" on September 1, had no record of any unusual failures of power in northern Arizona that night.

In Nevada, neither Sierra Pacific nor Nevada Power, which completed their merger in late July and which control all electrical transmission in the state, were aware of any noteworthy blackouts.

"We've had no real problems, no bad weather" in the northern portion of the state, said Sierra Pacific spokeswoman Faye Andersen.

"There's been no trouble," said Sonya Headen, Nevada Power public information officer. "The only time this summer we experienced any kind of power outages was July 13" when flooding left about 2,000 customers temporarily without electricity.

According to Headen, no other power companies serve Nevada "until competition comes in March 2000. We're the only ones."

Meanwhile, whether the lights in the sky were UFO activity or just junk heading back to Earth, Rolwes and the eyewitness reports agreed that the event was truly spectacular.

"Low in the sky a meteor was slowly arcing eastward," said Toby Hemenway of Oakland, OR. "It was big and slow, leaving a streak several times broader than any of the night's others. And it just kept going, leaving a tail a degree or two long. As I watched, stunned that it was still visible, I could see a second smaller body in the tail moving at the same speed. Then it arced lower and turned flame yellow, increasing in size, almost seeming to spit off sparks. I could easily discern a spherical mass; it was enormous! It traversed the entire sky, taking 20 or 30 seconds as I danced excitedly on the deck, watching."

"When it neared the eastern horizon, the yellow ball split in two, both bodies moving in parallel. Somehow I kept expecting one piece to drop away, but Newton doesn't work that way, I realized, and they kept moving together, followed by the original fragment in the tail. Finally the whole incredible show disappeared slowly into the light of Roseburg on the horizon, and I knew I'd seen something I'd remember all my life."