When Lillian Bernhagen of Worthington, Ohio, heard the loud thump in her backyard during a storm this weekend, she didn’t think much about it. It wasn’t for several hours, when authorities came knocking on Bernhagen’s door, that she learned the source of the noise. There was a blimp in her backyard.
The 128-foot-long airship, belonging to an Orlando-based advertising company and hawking Hangar 1 Vodka, broke free from its moorings at nearby Columbus Airport and went on a two-mile free flight, eventually landing in Bernhagen’s back yard, where it happily caused little damage. The owners were said to be investigating what caused the wayward derigible to escape, though they doubted it was anything other than a case of a “freak storm” being stronger than the tiedowns that held the blimp.
