Spotted on Saturday June 14th in Thonex, a suburb on the east side of Geneva in Switzerland, a mock Montgolfier balloon attached to the platform of a large scissor lift.
The event was the 60th anniversary celebrations of the Maison des Quartiers, community centre in the town. This stunt dubbed ‘Montgolfière’ on the events timetable, featured a large balloon resting on a small tower base in the platform and guy-roped to the guardrails, along with some sandbags and rush matting attached to the guardrails to represent the balloon’s basket.
The scissor lift with its balloon, was raised to its full 13 metre platform height complete with four people on board. The top of the balloon would have been close to 20 metres high.
The lift, a Sinoboom 4389RE/1323RE electric Rough Terrain from the UP-Group fleet, it has a maximum platform capacity of 680kg. Its hard to gauge the weight of that balloon but the people will be somewhere close to 400kg, the scaffolding and matting … say 100kg? Leaving around 180kg for the balloon and sandbags etc.. .. so probably just within the machine’s capacity,
However, as anyone knows, or should know, placing anything such as flags or banners on the guardrails creates a sail which can overturn a lift if the wind picks up. This monster balloon rising some six metres above the platform floor is asking for trouble. It seems that on Saturday the wind was still enough for them to have got away with this stunt. Lucky!
Definitely one for our Death Wish series
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