The Balloons Come Down
One thing that the organizers of the event did not expect was that a cold front was arriving, announcing the end of summer and the beginning of fall. Ordinarily, helium balloons stay afloat long enough for all the air to leak out of them before they begin to fall back to earth. However, at this particular event, they floated up and hit the cold air mass that was descending on Cleveland. The organizers could also be forgiven for not understanding the environmental consequences of releasing 1.5 million balloons into the atmosphere, considering that many people in 1986 were not aware of the dangers of pollution.
The balloons rose up in a giant mass, enthralling children and adults alike, and became little specks among the clouds. When they hit the cold air and the rain that the front was bringing, they quickly began their descent back to earth, with much of the helium still inside of them. They rained down on the nearby Burke Lakefront Airport, next to the shores of Lake Erie on the Cleveland side. The airport had to shut down for an hour because the inflated balloons that littered the runway were a hazard to departing and arriving planes.
They also rained down on Lake Erie itself, which is a thriving ecosystem for many forms of wildlife and plant life. The inflated balloons covered the surface of the water in what may have looked like a festive scene but were actually disastrous for search and rescue efforts. Raymond Broderick and Bernard Sulzer were fishermen who had gone out on Lake Erie the day before and not come back home. The day of Balloonfest, their families reported them missing, and the Coast Guard began a search and rescue operation. The balloons were so dense that the service had to be called off. The two men’s bodies later washed up on shore.
Lake Erie forms a border between the United States and Canada. Over the next few weeks, winds on the water blew the now-deflated balloons northwards to the Ontario, Canada shores of the lake. Residents were less than thrilled to have to pick up the balloon debris that was littering the natural shoreline. The balloons were made of plastic, which is not biodegradable, so the only way to deal with the plight was to pick them up and dispose of them. Many local Canadians expressed great dismay at the harm to the environment that the spectacle had caused.
A local, P. Allen Woodliffe, said, “A short time ago I was walking along the east beach of one of the special natural areas in Ontario-Rondeau Provincial Park. I was greatly dismayed, however, when I saw balloons along the shore, not just one or two but many. In an average 200-yard stretch along the east beach, I counted 140 balloons. In the same average distance along the south beach, there were at least 300. This translated into anywhere from 10,000 to 15,000 balloons scattered along the 8-1/2 miles of shoreline at Rondeau.”