TARGET 160810
Cleveland Released
1.5 Million Balloons
In 1986, as part of a fund raiser for The United Way, the city of Cleveland, Ohio, decided to release 1.5 million helium-filled balloons into the sky above the city.
Thousands of volunteers met underneath a huge net that was stretched over a multi-story framework.....
...to fill balloons with helium and release them...
...so they could drift upwards and fill the net...
...so they could all be launched at once.
It looked like the weather was turning bad, so the launch was made ahead of schedule. The playful bursts of color were great on camera. They seemed to say, "you know who knows how to have a good time? Cleveland, that's who.
The clouds of balloons swirled playfully over the city.
But then the bad weather blew in off the Lake and the masses of balloons stopped looking like a fun-times cloud of and more like a technicolor swarm of locusts.
Gusts of wind rose up from the drab Great Lakes and pummeled the balloons to the ground.
With nowhere to go, the sky was filled with an impenetrable cloud of balloons.
The massive cloud became a danger to air traffic, causing flights to be delayed, and even causing a full-blown balloon riot out on the Lake, with danger of getting sucked into boat propellers.
The crew of the coast guard search and rescue helicopter said they felt like they were flying through an asteroid field. It took hours for the cloud to dissipate well enough to no longer be a danger to air traffic, and days for all the now deflating balloons stuck in the lake waters to be cleared away.
"The best laid plans of mice and men go oft awry."
(from the poem,""To a Mouse, on Turning Her Up in Her Nest with the Plough" by Robert Burns, 1785)
FEEDBACK MAP
If you got impressions for which this feedback is insufficient, more information, pictures and videos can be found at the following web sites:
Cleveland Remembers
Balloonfest '86
Cleveland local newscast of the event w/ timeline & details
Many thanks to Ray McClure for creating and programming this target.