Who Killed Easter Rabbit? Ten Thousand Plastic Eggs Copter-dropped

I'm sure it's being done with the best of intentions, but the planned Catalyst Church Easter Egg drop of ten thousand plastic eggs from a helicopter onto a field at Keigwin School Saturday seems like an accident waiting to happen.

A video of an Easter Egg drop in 2007 in Fredricksburg, VA.



The plan has the approval of Middletown Fire Marshall Lewis Larosa.

"The eggs will be dropped in some kind of netting, and the children will be held back until the eggs are dropped," Larosa said.  "The FAA has all the jurisdiction about the ceiling at which the helicopter will fly, and it's cargo."

UPDATE:

Middletown Fire Chief Gary Oulette said this afternoon that the church does not have the authorization of the Fire Department to hold the event.


"They would need to have a truck standing by, and that is not authorized," Oulette said.

The Keigwin field may also be sodden from three days of heavy rain, and despite drainage work done under the field, the hunt may turn the field to mud.

The Board of Education building department has also approved the plan based on the approval by the Fire Marshall.  A source at the BOE building department said that the church expects 500 children to attend.  With a nice day, and the coverage of the story in the Hartford Courant, that may be an underestimate.  A quick browse of the web indicate that these egg drops have been popular with Christian churches throughout the country, often attracting thousands of participants.

Neither Mayor Sebastian Giuliano nor Police Chief Patrick McMahon were aware of plans for the Easter Egg drop.

Larosa acknowledges that Keigwin does not have appropriate parking for even 500 attendees.

But, according to at least one report of such an egg-drop in Georgia, the best-laid plans are often trampled by an Easter-crazed mob of children and their parents.

This report from a blogger who attended such a drop in Cartersville GA:

My boys and I arrived at the EggDrop location, which happened to be at the foot of the historic 1,000-year-old Etowah Indian Mounds Historic Site. The first sign of a plan gone wild revealed itself as we approached a fenced-in football field that already held about 5,000 crammed-in people. My first instinct was to turn and run, but I doubt that I could have explained my flight to the 5-year-old with a vice grip on his Easter basket.

EggDrop ground zero was the 50 yard line, and it was surrounded by yellow event tape at a radius of about 20 yards. When the helicopter made its first pass, that yellow event tape was no match for the thousands of screaming kids who burst through to catch the falling plastic eggs. The real problem, though, was that the organizers had not expected that the first drop of around 700 eggs would pelt moms, dads, and unsuspecting eight-year-olds. Panic erupted into chaos when some idiot oranizer with a mega-phone shouted to everyone, “Please, Leave The Field Immediately!” Too late, pal, Pandora’s Easter basket was already wide open. 

There were hundreds of crying and lost children and bruised, panicking parents frantically circling the 50 yard line. The second attempt by the then extremely annoying Megaphone-distiller-of-Chaos– “It is Important. You Must Leave The Field, Immediately!” This just exacerbated the frenzy of separated parents and kids who simultaneously trying to obey the Mega-Idiot and search for their scattered families. At one point, I ran over to the M-I and tried to explain to him that no parent is going to leave the field without the right wounded children, myself included. 

I further pleaded with him to radio the helicopter and ask them to hold off dropping any eggs until things could be sorted out. He informed me that he did not have radio contact with the helicopter. I didn’t stick around to discuss the comparison of this situation to the underlying theme of Joesph Heller’s most famous book. Instead I dove into the scrum to find my kids. As I pushed my way to the 48 yard line, I saw my two boys sitting on the ground crying. Meanwhile, goofy old RayLiotta in the helicopter was circling with another drop of about 700 more plastic eggs, which cascaded onto the field amidst rippling pops as the egg shells bounced off every man, woman, and child. I ‘m pretty sure that my two boys took the brunt of about salvos before we escaped the perimeter of the field. In fact, as we were leaving the park I counted no fewer than the 7 rounds of egg drops.

While the Board of Education says that Catalyst "has their own insurance," one has to wonder what liability the city, or the BOE bears if a child looks up at the dropping eggs and catches one in the eye.

A wiser friend asked how the $10,000 spent on the helicopter has any bearing on a child's relationship with Jesus at Easter, and perhaps the money would be better spent dropping food or medical supplies in a place like Haiti.