‘Thank God’ no damage to church from hot air balloon incident
Courtesy of the Bobtown and Dunkard Township Volunteer Fire Department’s Facebook page
Courtesy of the Bobtown and Dunkard Township Volunteer Fire Department’s Facebook page
A balloon landed Saturday morning in the parking lot of St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Bobtown, Dunkard Township, with the balloon coming to rest on the church’s tower. No injuries were reported.
If there’s a clogged toilet or something broken in one of Greene County’s Catholic churches, Tom Raymond, a deacon and administrator, is the one who gets the call.
But a toilet call is much more common than the one he got Saturday morning for a hot air balloon that got tangled in a church’s steeple in Bobtown.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident at St. Ignatius Catholic Church at 305 Grant St. 9 a.m. Saturday in which an FAA spokeswoman said the balloon was blown into the church by the wind after it landed.
“Thank God, we can’t really see any damage to the steeple,” Raymond said, which is at least 60 feet tall.
The balloon draped over the front part of the steeple, and Raymond said the hardest part about the situation was finding a bucket truck to cut the balloon off the cross. I took about seven hours to get the balloon down, he said.
“It took a while to get things cleaned up because we couldn’t find a big enough lift,” he said.
He said someone will be out just to make sure there is no structural damage to the steeple.
“But we had Mass later on in the afternoon,” he added.
Bobtown-Dunkard fire Lt. Brian McCorkle Jr. said that he’s just glad no one was hurt in the situation. The basket was already safely on the ground when the balloon got caught in the church’s steeple, according to the pilot and witnesses on scene, he said.
Courtesy of Donna Argentine Todd
Courtesy of Donna Argentine Todd
Crews work to remove a deflated hot air balloon Saturday from the tower of St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Bobtown, Dunkard Township.
“The only reason the balloon got caught on the steeple was because the pilot had shut the burners down to pack up the balloon after he had landed. Well, the balloon fell in the direction of the church and got caught,” McCorkle said. “The church and the steeple itself had no visual damage.”
The only damage, McCorkle continued, was to the balloon.