Photo by George Hall The balloon is nearly back to earth after being knocked around by wind for nearly two hours.
Baltimore, MD, July 17, 2004 – The thousands of firefighters attending the 21st annual Firehouse Expo were treated to a steady drumbeat of working fires and second alarms every night. But an unusual highlight – potentially disastrous, but finally resolved without serious injury – was this odd incident on Saturday afternoon. A tethered sightseeing balloon that carries tourists above the Port Discovery museum a few blocks east of the Baltimore Convention Center became stalled at the end of its computerized winch system when sudden high winds blew in.
The 16 occupants of the balloon were buffeted for nearly two hours, with gusts approaching 50 knots, before the balloon’s backup 5-hp winch could pull them safely to the ground. The gondola’s steel cage smacked into the air conditioning shack atop Police Headquarters about 100 feet away. The erratic winds pushed the balloon up and down. An occupant of the balloon called 911 on his cell phone to report the emergency.
The Baltimore City Fire Department responded with an engine, two trucks, a battalion chief and three medic units, including Rescue 1 and the special operations team, but ultimately the jakes had little to do. At one point, because of another approaching storm, the rescue crew hooked up a snatch-block to the balloon’s cable to the rescue rig in an attempt to pull it down, but the balloon operators insisted on letting the automated systems solve the problem. EMTs transported several people to hospitals with bruises and more than a few cases of severe motion sickness.
The chief of department and the mayor responded from home, undoubtedly mindful of an eerily similar disaster only a few months earlier, when a water taxi capsized with several fatalities as a squall blew suddenly across Baltimore Harbor.
