The Catastrophic Flop of Balloonfest '86

sponsored by rage shadow legends cleveland ohio the 1970s the city doesn't currently have the best reputation in fact it's absolutely god-awful for the last few years it had gone through sky-high crime rates rising poverty levels and major industrial pollution industrial pollution so bad that just a few years ago one of its rivers actually caught fire on thirteen separate occasions things were not good and several organizations in the city decided enough was enough one of these organizations is united way of cleveland set up in the late 70s the group was dead set on helping out the city's financials for the next few years they help out local communities by fundraising millions of dollars and distributing it to local agencies and institutions that was all well and good but it wasn't quite as grand as what george fraser the marketing manager of united way had envisioned he'd set his sights on something much bigger in early 1986 a few members of the group gather round at this point cleveland had cleaned itself up a bit but the city's reputation still lingered something had to change fraser decides that what the city needs is a bit of rebranding cleveland was going to become cool but how well he had an incredible idea balloons it was perfect all they'd have to do is round up a few students to pump them up sell a few kids some sponsorships and then just let them off into the sky it couldn't be simpler they just had to come up with the right amount of them they eventually agree on a nice round number two million with that many balloons it would be a world record even beating disneyland who'd launched a million balloons a year before it was going to be massive they asked the city council for permission 2 million balloons of course the local airport fine with us the police go right ahead and with that they begin planning saturday the 27th of september 1986 the day of balloon fest hundreds of thousands of balloons in netted in a three-story scaffold standing at the center of cleveland's public square in it 2 500 students and other volunteers hard at work pumping even more things are looking good public turnout is massive with thousands of people watching from the square and even more from afar and united way has raised over half a million dollars through balloon sponsorships things are going swimmingly however there is a slight problem there's a rainstorm and it's headed straight for them the managers of united were you informed immediately hmm a rainstorm hitting the balloons has the potential to be absolutely disastrous but most of the balloons are already pumped and so an executive decision is made gentlemen we're going to have to stop pumping and pack up we're launching earlier than expected and at 1 50 pm 1.4 million balloons are released quickly before we move on have you ever heard of raid shadow legends like fighting through hordes of enemies and epic battles raid has tons of them enjoy collecting suspiciously underdressed characters raid 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far things are going great people are out in droves everyone's having a good time and cleveland just set a monumental world record for a brief moment it looked like they'd pulled it off then something started happening see the idea was that the balloons would float up into the atmosphere scatter and then either burst or deflate before falling back down to earth that's not what happened it turned out that the rain showed up a little early and as soon as the balloons drifted into the clouds they were met with a front of cold air and a shower of rain and they came straight back down again the result 1429 643 balloons come floating back down to earth flooding the streets of northeast ohio and clogging lake erie things go downhill from there it's not long before car crashes begin to pepper the city as drivers swerve in and out of the hellfire from above and it turns out that tens of thousands of balloons in and around the local airport prove a bit challenging for incoming and outcoming traffic and after balloons completely coat the runway they have to outright shut it down specially protected nature reserves a few miles up the lake in canada are also here clogging their beautiful lakes and untouched beaches with tens of thousands of vibrant multi-coloured rubber balloons some horses were also injured it was total chaos it doesn't end there though it turned out that united way had failed to check with the coast guard for any active emergencies on lake erie as it turns out there was a day before launch two fishermen had gone out into the lake they never came back it was now the day of the launch and they still hadn't come back so the coast guard is sent in but then come the balloons needless to say this complicated matters considerably but a few hours into the search and the men's boats are spotted anchored near a break ball in the lake the men had to be near so the coast guard then sent in a search and rescue helicopter however it ran into some issues it turns out that it had severe difficulty reaching the area of the boat due to the asteroid field of balloons in the way yeah we're heading back boys so back out come the boats they roam around the lake for hours in search of the two men put the tens of thousands of balloons in the water to make it impossible to see anything in the end the search just had to be cancelled tragically the bodies were found washed up on shore two days later after thousands of dollars of damages hordes of car crashes and two fatalities the brunt of balloon fest had finally passed and in the following days massive efforts to clear the balloons from the city go underway but the balloons were relentless still appearing even weeks after the event though mostly on the canadian side in fact the majority of the balloons actually ended up in canada despite the country having nothing to do with the launch naturally they were not very pleased so things didn't pan out too well but hey at least united way raised half a million dollars for charity right well no not really while they had raised around 500 000 through selling balloon sponsorships that money would turn out to be nowhere near enough for the barrage of lawsuits that came their way first up was one of the fishermen's wives shisu's united way for three million the owner of the injured horses also steps in she sues for a hundred thousand both lawsuits finish up with under slow settlements a number of other lawsuits seeking tens of thousands of dollars for damages also follow suit in the end the costs of the settlement actually outrun the event's profits and fundraising efforts losing the united way of cleveland more money than they had even raised making balloon fest a complete failure on all fronts it would later be revealed that the managers of balloon fest actually knew about the incoming rainstorm the day before the event but thought nothing of it meaning that the entire debacle could have been avoided entirely so

Channel: big boss

Views: 421,754

Rating: 4.9122233 out of 5

Keywords: big boss, The Catastrophic Flop of Balloonfest '86, balloonfest, balloonfest 86, balloonfest 1986, balloon failure, the doomed cleveland balloonfest of '86, '86, balloon, fest, cleveland, balloonfest failure, balloon festival, balloonfest '86

Id: 3LOWBJYpxS4

Length: 9min 10sec (550 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 20 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Economy_Grab]

This is a much better video about it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0CT8zrw6lw