A Delta Air Lines flight was struck by a firework as it landed at Chicago’s Midway Airport on Saturday, after severe weather cancelled many of the Chicagoland area’s Fourth of July festivities.
Flight 1076 landed safely after a mortar exploded beneath the plane as it descended 250 feet over the runway. No emergency measures were required, and the plane was able to taxi to its gate with nearly 60 passengers and crew aboard. The aircraft was inspected, and only minor damage to the paint was found before the Airbus A319 returned to service.
“Tower, we just had a firework hit our plane, Delta 1076, we're continuing," the pilots told air traffic control. "We’re just hoping it was just a mortar that went off underneath, but definitely felt a big bang.”
Midway Airport is surrounded by a “bungalow belt” of residential developments that grew rapidly in the 1920s, around the time former farmland was filling in with factories and industrial parks. Today, the neighborhoods of Archer Heights, Garfield Ridge, West Elsdon and Clearing still hug what was once one of the busiest airports in the country before Chicago O’Hare opened in the 1950s.
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These neighbors were among those lashed with rain on Saturday, with some areas receiving up to two inches. Severe weather impacted Fourth of July festivities throughout Chicagoland, flooding streets, shrouding Navy Pier in fog, and cancelling official fireworks shows in Roselle Huntley, Aurora and other suburbs. Evidently, the illegal fireworks displays that have become a Fourth of July tradition, not only in Chicago but many other metro areas, were not postponed by citizen organizers near Midway.
Severe weather was a theme across much of the United States this Fourth of July weekend. Organizers of the Freedom 250 anniversary in Washington D.C. were forced to postpone multiple events, including President Trump’s official address and the Fourth of July fireworks display, due to severe heat and storms. Attendees were asked to leave the Freedom 250 Fairgrounds for several hours on Friday, and others were evacuated from the National Mall to shelter in surrounding buildings, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC).
The District also cancelled the official Independence Day Parade due to temperatures between 110°F and 115°F. That decision came on the heels of heat-related illnesses and cancellations in cities up and down the East Coast, much of which was under a punishing heat dome last week. Over 100 train enthusiasts who waited hours to see Union Pacific’s famous Big Boy locomotive in Pennsylvania on Friday succumbed to heat-related illnesses.
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The hotly anticipated Big Boy stop in Philadelphia was cut short this weekend, with the display closed early on Sunday afternoon after officials got nervous about attendees repeating the “mass casualty” event in Reading when bottled water began to run low. The City of Brotherly Love had already cancelled its Independence Parade, All-American Block Party and other major events on July 4, although both participants and observers had traveled from around the country and even internationally to attend.
Meanwhile, hot and dry weather in the Mountain West forced states like Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska and New Mexico to cancel their fireworks due to dangerous drought conditions. Colorado alone cancelled almost 60 official fireworks programs due to ongoing wildfires, including the Snyder Fire near Grand Junction that recently took the lives of three firefighters and injured two more.
Fortunately, the errant firework at Chicago’s Midway did not add to the hundreds of heat-related illnesses and over a dozen deaths attributed to extreme heat and weather nationwide in the lead-up to a sweltering Fourth of July and Semiquincentennial.
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