The Public square of Cleveland was selected for the event, the park was full of citizens who came to spectate the helium mass. As planned at 1.50PM 1.5 million balloons were released to the air by cutting off the net. People watched with great joy, a mountain of helium was raising over the Public square of Cleveland, the sky was covered with colorful balloons. United way had no idea what sort of a disaster this could lead them to, the latex bio-degradable balloons were design to reach the ground once out of helium and self-decompose. Little did the organizers know of what sort of danger a bad weather can bring to the event, they never thought about it. There was a storm the previous night interrupting the preparations but it all looked okay and the sky was clear in the afternoon prior to releasing the balloons, unexpectedly, as soon as the balloons reached the cold fronts they were pushed down and started floating towards the south. At the same time the winds and rain caused the balloons to hit the ground while they are still inflated. Can you imagine what would happen if 1.5 million balloons were on the ground? The highways were full of balloons causing many accidents and traffic jams, balloons carried by the winds caused a nearby airport to delay or cancel many flights as well. The balloons floated until Medina County, Ohio where many other accidents took place, the balloons landed in the fields of a resident and panicked all the horses, causing a lot of them to injure themselves. The furious resident later sued the organizers and they had to pay a considerable amount for the damages caused. Even the Lake Erie was filled with balloons, cleaning and clearing the inflated balloons from the lake took lot of efforts and the organizers had to bear the cost for this as well. Two of the fishermen who left for fishing the previous day in Lake Erie were also reported missing, later the investigators found their boat but not the bodies. They came to a conclusion the bad weather would have toppled the boat killing the fishermen, since the lake was filled with balloons it was impossible to spot the fisherman, rescue helicopters could not fly in this area due to thousands of balloons in the air. Can you imagine how difficult it is to spot a drowning person among thousands of balloons floating on the water? 

Weeks later the bodies of the fishermen came ashore. One of the dead fisherman’s family also sued the organizers and they had to pay 3.2 million dollars as compensation. Even though the balloons were bio-degradable, Lake Erie was filled with balloons for weeks making it nearly impossible to clear. Some of the balloons were found in shores of Canada as well.

United ways started the event with a clear intension of fund raising but ended up paying tremendous amounts as compensations and also tarnished the name. This was not only a Guinness world record but also one of the biggest commercial failures in the history.