How Releasing 1,500,000 Balloons Went Horribly Wrong - Balloonfest '86

just about everything is ready from balloon fest eighty-six set to take place in downtown Cleveland tomorrow to benefit the United Way literally millions of balloons will be released on public square which will set a world record watching a colorful balloon drift away into the sky ignites a basic childlike joy within us all but can you imagine the mind-blowing spectacle of watching one and a half million balloons being released all at once well that's exactly what executives from Cleveland USA's United Way charity set out to achieve on Saturday the 27th of September 1986 with months of careful planning and an ambitious vision in mind they said all the makings of a historic event they would put the city on the map once and for all but on that fateful day the people of Cleveland were about to be reminded of the basic laws of gravity what goes up must always come down [Music] United Way is a nonprofit organization which aims to tackle poverty and support local communities by focusing on improving essential areas of daily life like education income and health what would later become known as balloon fest 86 was organized by the charity is a fundraiser event that would not only benefit the community but would also be a major publicity stunt for what many believed was an underappreciated city sounds good so far right the idea for a record-breaking mass balloon release was actually inspired by some friendly competition with Disneyland's first official Park in Anaheim California which had previously set the world record in December 1985 to honor the 30th anniversary of the parks opening in 1955 as well as what would have been Walt Disney's 84th birthday classmates from Anaheim high school helped to fill 1 million balloons with helium and large tents before they were mass released from the parking lot during an event happily named sky fest United Way executives knew that their own balloon release had to be much bigger and more memorable than sky fest so naturally they decided to double the number and aim for a modest record of two million balloons instead to help coordinate the stunt the charity first caught upon the LA based specialized company balloon art by Trev spearheaded by professional balloon artist trip hiding for some much-needed expertise you can inflate a balloon in three seconds four seconds I understand how long is he gonna take these kids with no experience we're figuring that they'll do about two to three balloons a minute I've been doing this since I was 15 years old so it's unfair to compare but two to three balloons a minute each kid is gonna do correctly about 700 balloons or so for the day and we'll do it in about four to six hours all the balloons hiding alongside balloon fest zone project manager Tom Halawa spent about six months in total preparing for the monumental event but no one could have foreseen the chaos that would ensue when the big day finally arrived in order to release such an insane number of balloons at one time they had to be inflated and properly counted first and that meant having somewhere to store them in the meantime in an interview hallowing explained that he was tasked with designing a structure to safely house the balloons they complied with local building codes while also being able to withstand up to 60 mile-per-hour winds we thought we started out with just building a box to hold balloons then we didn't realize we were building a building the final product was a ginormous woven mesh net created by the same company in SoCal who had previously built a cargo nets for the space shuttle the massive rectangular structure was set up on the southwest quadrant of Cleveland's public square and was the size of an entire city block measuring some 250 feet long a hundred and fifty feet wide and a towering three stories beneath the enormous net which now boast above the city skyline like some heaving multicolored Mountain we're around 2500 volunteers frantically filling as many balloons as possible with helium before releasing them into the mass of colored latex above many more band-aids on their hands to protect their fingers from blistering during the repetitive task of nighttime most of the people involved were students from nearby schools while children also sold sponsorships to benefit United Way at the price of one dollar for two balloons the entire thing reportedly costs United Way about 500 thousand dollars to pull off which is pretty ironic considering it was a fundraising event that supposedly relied on donations alone nevertheless thousands of people gathered around as they anticipated what was sure to be a moment for the history books but there was one unforeseen problem well everybody down here Bob and Doreen says the show will still go on that is tomorrow tonight of course the workers have a long long night ahead of them as you can see behind me back there the seam in the tarpaulin that covers the the balloon bin that was torn during the storm if you tilt up you can see the larger balloons the ones that were to lift the netting off the off the top of the bin and release the million-and-a-half balloons thanks to have been decompressed up there right now as a matter of fact half of them have blown down organizers hadn't properly considered the possibility of adverse weather and a storm that blew through Cleveland the night before threatened to cancel the event and caused organizers to work through the night although fingers remain crossed that the big day would see clear skies things weren't looking up with no other option an emergency decision was made the balloons would have to be released early meaning the official number of balloons was actually just shy of one and a half million at about 1:50 p. m. that afternoon United Way untethered the giant net above the city and onlooker stood by in awe as a blizzard of brightly colored orbs filled the sky above them it is 2 p.

m. approach to rain storm started moving in from the lake and it was decided to launch the balloons early [Applause] the balloons like a giant cloud rolls over the square others tumbled and danced against the buildings within no time the billowing cloud of helium balloons had wound their way around Cleveland's terminal tower and dispersed into the surrounding skyline as organizers had anticipated it was quite the spectacle but his people on the streets below gleefully celebrated the astonishing feat little could prepare them for the total mayhem that was about to unfold you might be wondering at this point where exactly would one and a half million balloons go once they've been released into the atmosphere would they simply float off into space or cause some sort of environmental disaster when a typical helium balloon is released into the air they can rise to an altitude of up to 10 kilometers before it bursts into tiny fragments and drifts back down to earth as altitude increases the outside air pressure diminishes while the pressure from inside the balloon remains the same this causes the elastic material to expand before it eventually explodes this is basically what United Way thought would happen they even claimed that the balloons they used were biodegradable even better the balloons may have taken off into the skies intended but it wasn't long until things went south very quickly as the balloons covered the sky they immediately came into contact with the forecasted cold front and were blown back in a southerly direction by strong wind and rain in fact more than 1 million of the floating orbs dropped back down to earth almost immediately littering the streets of Cleveland and clogging waterways all over Northeast Ohio as you might expect has had some pretty devastating repercussions on the streets below as unsuspecting residents were suddenly confronted by a blizzard of garish colors as drivers swerved to avoid the floating objects or took their eyes off the road to gawk at the spectacle overhead there were reports of minor car accidents across the city and beyond the strong winds also managed to push a large number of the balloons onto a runway at Burke Lakefront Airport which had to be temporarily closed for half an hour causing unexpected travel delays suddenly it seemed like the publicity balloon fest 86 would inevitably attract was not a what United Way had in mind the mass balloon release had kick-started an unfortunate chain of events that would solidify this event as one of the most spectacular marketing fails in history one of the most bizarre repercussions occurred after some of the balloons traveled as far as Medina County Ohio where they landed on a pasture owned by a woman named Louise now a cow ski now a cow ski kept some thoroughbred Arabian horses on this land and one of the animals was so spooked by the sudden shower of balloons that it allegedly ran straight into a nearby fence causing it to suffer permanent injuries now a cow ski was pretty peeved as any proud horse owner might be in fact she was so furious that she later sued the United Way of Cleveland for a whopping $100,000 in damages which was eventually settled for how disclosed terms things had certainly gone from bad to worse for the organizers behind this catastrophic event but the worst was yet to come the wind and rain had also carried a large number of balloons northwards towards Lake Erie where heavy torrents pushed them down into the water unpopped now this is hardly an ideal situation as far as environmentalists were concerned and the cleanup operation was sure to be costly but there was a far more pressing situation at hand on Friday the 26th of September the day before the event two fishermen by the names of Raymond Broderick and Bernard Sol sir had failed to return from their trip on Lake Erie the men were reported missing by their families early on Saturday morning and rescuers had spotted their 16-foot boat anchored west on the edge water park breakwall the Coast Guard guessed that the boat had capsized in choppy waters and the men had managed to swim towards the breakwall before the boat managed to ride itself as balloon fest eighty-six spectacularly backfired in the center of Cleveland however the mission to locate the men had suddenly become 10 times harder ironically that big balloon launch in Cleveland today is one of the things that's making this search so tough for the Coast Guard can you imagine trying to find somebody floating out here or even spotting a lifejacket with all these balloons on the water the hundreds of thousands of still inflated colored balloons that had been blown onto the surface of the lake made it nyeon impossible to distinguish between the head of a drowning man and a bobbing balloon meanwhile the search-and-rescue helicopter could no longer fly overhead thanks to the asteroid field of floating spheres littering the air two days later on September 29th it was reported that the local Coast Guard had called off the search for the two missing men thanks to the complications caused by the mass balloon release within the next two weeks the bodies of both Raymond Broderick and Bernard saucer would wash up on the shores of Lake Erie sure the balloons themselves hadn't directly killed anyone but as far as some were concerned United Way now had blood on their hands among these people was Raymond's wife Gail Broderick who decided to take legal action against the charity executives and filed a lawsuit for an eye-watering 3.