Rose Parade 2019 float catches fire, then saved by tow truck

Well, this is an interesting start to the new year! During the 2019 Rose Parade on Tuesday, we actually saw a float catch fire in the middle of it.

Let’s start with the good news here — nobody is hurt and everyone is fine. Still, this isn’t exactly anything that you would expect to see during a lighthearted holiday parade. A tow track was eventually able to come over and save the float (which seemed to be put on by Wells Fargo); meanwhile, the Gold Rush Fire Brigade float just marched on past. The irony here is limitless. Also, Smokey the Bear was riding on one of the other floats today — mind you, this wasn’t a forest fire, but hopefully he could pass on some advice.

Let’s go ahead and get the obvious joke out of the way here that clearly, 2019 is off to a tremendous start. (We’re being sarcastic here, if that wasn’t clear.) In watching the parade coverage with Cord and Tish, somehow this was all the more ridiculous as Will Ferrell called the whole event “exciting” after learning that everyone was okay. It wasn’t so much a giant fire as just a tiny one and a ton of smoke.

In a post on Twitter below, you can get an update from the City of Pasadena’s official account — the float was towed and the fire was extinguished, but this is clearly all sorts of embarrassing for everyone involved. Granted, we actually do understand how something like this could happen given the fact that some of these parade organizers likely face a great deal of pressure to make bigger and more exciting floats year after year, and some of them have a lot of effects and mechanics that, in the wrong moment, could easily go awry and spawn some sort of crisis situation like this.

Yet, here we are, entering the new year with a story about an innocent parade and a fire. It’s a weird world that we live in these days, but at least the remainder of the parade went on swimmingly with only a tiny little break in the action. It’s not as though this made everything come to a grinding halt forever. (Of course, we cannot say the same for the NBC coverage of the Parade — clearly, nobody prepared the production for what was going to happen in the case of a fire and it turned into total chaos in the closing minutes. Basically, nobody knew what to do with themselves.)

Related News – Be sure to check out some more coverage of the Rose Parade

What do you think about a float catching fire during the Rose Parade? Be sure to share in the attached comments. (Photo: NBC.)