The Washington Nationals’ biggest impact Wednesday came even ahead of first pitch of their home game against the Arizona Diamondbacks. It turns out that their plan for pre-game U.S. Army parachutists as part of Military Appreciation Night didn’t quite receive all the proper levels of clearance and inform all the proper people ahead of flying planes over this part of Washington, D.C., and that led to an evacuation of the U.S. Capitol. First, here’s the parachutist jump:
HERE THEY COME @Nationals FANS!! pic.twitter.com/F64drmj1Zx
— Olivia Garvey (@OliviaNBCLA) April 20, 2022
Next, here’s the chaos it spawned:
— Aaron Fritschner (@Fritschner) April 20, 2022
Per @flightradar24, this U.S. Army parachute team aircraft was circling the area for a while. It’s apparently for tonight’s Nationals game.
It appears that someone forgot to tell USCP, triggering tonight’s evacuation order……… pic.twitter.com/2i8uvlXf4t
— Andrew Desiderio (@AndrewDesiderio) April 20, 2022
🚨NEW — Capitol evacuation — Single engine aircraft. Parachutists into Nats Park. Not coordinated appropriately, per two people directly familiar tell @CNN
— Mike Valerio (@ValerioCNN) April 20, 2022
There are very specific permissions and notifications required for operating planes around the Capitol, and apparently something got significantly missed here by someone. And it seems likely that a whole lot of people are having quite a bad evening as a result. But this did lead to a lot of Twitter jokes:
https://twitter.com/LethalityJane/status/1516916202873913344
I'm sorry but "pregame entertainment for Nationals – Dbacks" is the funniest possible baseball combination to cause an evacuation of any sort https://t.co/qDicwqQw17
— Emma Baccellieri (@emmabaccellieri) April 20, 2022
I ask again as I do. Why are the Nationals? https://t.co/nkxMn1j9Nb
— Robbie Mack (@ctcultureblog) April 20, 2022
With the Nationals 6-7 heading into this game and widely expected to finish near the bottom of the NL East this year, this may be one of the larger impacts they have on the world this MLB season. It just probably wasn’t the one they were hoping for.
[Mike Valerio on Twitter; top image is a screengrab of a video that WULA ABC 7’s Olivia Garvey shared on Twitter]
