The year was 1986, Cleveland started to develop again and became a city that should give the image of ‘we are not destroyed, we are rising, we are happy’ to the whole world. For this reason, the authorities decided to organize an event that would show both the aid and the state of the city to the whole world. While discussions were going on for the event, one of the charities, United Way of Cleveland, came up with a very interesting idea.
The organization had planned an event that would both make the children happy and bring everyone in the city together. In fact, they were so ambitious that they would even enter the Guinness Book of Records with this event, which they did not know would end in disaster. So what was this event, what happened before and after?
According to the plans, thousands of volunteers in the city would gather in the square and inflate balloons together.
Yes, you didn’t read it wrong. People of all ages would sit down, fill the balloons with helium gas, and then release them into the sky. The goal was to release 1.5 million balloons into the sky at the same time.
Work started days in advance and announcements were made about the event. On September 26, one day before the event, the volunteers gathered in the town square. Since the balloons will be filled with helium gas, a huge net has been placed on a building in the square to prevent them from flying.
The next day the sky would be painted colorfully. At the same time, according to the target, the balloons would fly towards the lake and would not spread over a large area when they burst, since they have a degradable structure.
However, an unexpected development took place and the weather, which was expected to be sunny daily, started to deteriorate as of the night hours connecting 26 September to 27 September. It even got so bad that it started to rain heavily with the storm.
Some of the officials wanted the event to be postponed to another day, but the organizers decided to move it to earlier hours instead of canceling it. By 2 pm all the balloons were inflated and a large crowd filled the square.
And that moment came… With the opening of the net, 1.5 million balloons began to float towards the sky.
With the effect of helium, the balloons were expected to fly within a certain area up to 10 kilometers. However, when severe wind and rain were added to the adverse weather conditions, the balloons started to lose their direction and fly lower.
1.5 million balloons were all over Cleveland. The balloons that were supposed to be in the sky spread over the roads, buildings and even the lake, and soon the first news of the disaster came.
The balloons spreading on the roads got so low that they minimized the view of the drivers. Then there were traffic accidents all over the city.
Burke Lakefront Airport was forced to close for half an hour due to balloons on the runway as people tried to navigate the giant drops of helium that were slowly falling.
The area from which the balloons were deployed was so large that it even reached a horse farm on the other side of town.
He landed on a pasture in Medina County, Ohio, and startled some horses, injuring them.
The most crucial event that emerged as a result of the event was what happened to two fishermen.
On the day of the event, the police received a report that two men fishing in the lake were missing. Authorities were to start searching for the men, but because of the hundreds of thousands of balloons that spread through the city, no rescue effort could be made either by air, land or water.
In fact, the situation was so bad that the teams searching the lake could not distinguish whether it was a human head or a balloon because of the balloons. Although the men’s 16-foot boat was found moored in Edgewater Park, coastguard search and rescue teams were unable to locate them.
On September 29, Coast Guard teams suspended their search and the bodies of both men washed ashore days later. Despite all these tragic events, Cleveland made his name in the Guinness Book of Records, but Guinness removed this category from its list due to safety concerns.
You can watch the event with all the details in the video below.
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