MUNCY, Pa. — An unmanned Army surveillance blimp broke loose from its mooring in Maryland and floated over Pennsylvania for hours Wednesday with two fighter jets on its tail, triggering blackouts across the countryside as it dragged its tether across power lines.
The bulbous, 240-foot helium-filled blimp finally came down in a wooded hollow near Muncy, a small town about 80 miles north of Harrisburg, as people gawked in wonder and disbelief at the big, white, slow-moving craft.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command said the blimp escaped from its station at the military’s Aberdeen Proving Ground around 12:20 p.m. and drifted northward, climbing to about 16,000 feet. It covered approximately 150 miles in about 3½ hours.
As it drifted away, two F-16s were scrambled from a National Guard base at Atlantic City, New Jersey, to track it. NORAD spokesman Navy Capt. Scott Miller said there was never any intention of shooting it down.
The blimp — which cannot be steered remotely — eventually deflated and settled back to Earth on its own, according to Miller. He said there was an auto-deflate device aboard, but it was not deliberately activated, and it is unclear why the craft went limp.
He said it was also unknown how the blimp broke loose, and an investigation was underway.
Residents watched it float silently over the sparsely populated area, its dangling tether snapping power lines.
Tiffany Slusser Hartkorn saw it fly over her neighborhood on the outskirts of Bloomsburg around 2:15 p.m. and soon disappear from sight.
“I honestly was worried that there were people in it that would be injured. A neighbor down the road is thinking it knocked down a tree branch and power pole by his house that could’ve potentially destroyed his house,” Hartkorn said.
Wendy Schafer’s first thought upon seeing the blimp near her job at a spa and salon in Bloomsburg was that a nearby school was conducting an experiment.
“I had no idea what it was. We lost power at work, so I looked outside and saw the blimp,” Schafer said. “My first thought was Vo-Tech was doing something at the school until my friends tagged on Facebook about the blimp. It was crazy.”
About 27,000 customers in two counties were left without power, according to electric utility PPL, and Bloomsburg University canceled classes because of the outage. Electricity was restored to most people within a few hours. The craft even knocked out power to the State Police barracks at Bloomsburg barracks before settling among the trees, where it was swiftly cordoned off while military personnel began arriving to retrieve it.
