Pittsburgh loses river during Super Bowl celebration

The city of Pittsburgh and Allegheny County celebrated the Steelers NFL-record sixth Super Bowl victory well into the early morning hours. At the time of this publication there were no reported injuries or deaths.

The city did, however, suffer a major loss when an estimated 200,000 rabid Steeler fans celebrated by throwing their Terrible Towels—towels adorned with Steelers colors and logos—into the Monongahela River. Fans were attempting to "dye the river yellow" by letting the towels float down stream and into the Ohio River. The loss, however, was not the towels.

The revelers crossed the Smithfield St Bridge, Liberty Bridge and the 10th St Bridge toward the peninsula, while others moved against pedestrian traffic toward Station Square and East Carson St. Meanwhile, ShamWow, an ultra-absorbent towel maker, outfitted many of the raucous celebrants with free towels as a promotion for the cleaning product company—The Terrible ShamWow.

"The first Terrible ShamWow towel into the river was an accident, but the yellow looked real cool so we all started tossing the towels in," said Ben Shafer, a celebrating fan from Slippery Rock, PA.

The Terrible ShamWows began to absorb massive amounts of river water at an alarming rate. Drunken, stumbling fans were too caught up in the excitement to realize the consequences that such a high concentration of ShamWows would mean for the waterway. Pittsburgh Police made a valiant effort to save the river.

"[The Police] made a great attempt to stop the fans, but it was too late. The entire river was gone within a matter of twenty-five minutes," said Officer Leslie Stokes. "There's no telling where a liquid goes once it enters a ShamWow. The Monongahela was my favorite of the three rivers. It had a certain ... flow."

The Monongahela River flows almost 130 miles from West Virginia north into Pittsburgh. It is one of only a handful of northern flowing rivers in the world. Together with the Allegheny and Ohio Rivers the city earned the nickname Steel City of Three Rivers.


"We're the city of Three Rivers and it's going to be costly and time consuming to rewrite all of the city's tourism literature to say 'City of Two Rivers,'" said Luke R. Ravenstahl, mayor of Pittsburgh.

"I really don't know what to say other than it really was a great river and there are still two more," said ShamWow president, Tyler Shamwow.