[supercat]

Believe it or not, the balloon hit the power lines and caused an arc that sent people screaming.

I can believe that a balloon would cause an arc, but I would not expect the arc to carry a huge amount of current (compared with what the wires would normally deliver) nor to last a very long time. Unless people are releasing insane numbers of them, I can't imagine that the cumulative risk from balloons would approach that from animals and other natural phenomena.

[BerryDingle]

We need to get rid of all these stupid balloons.