A hot air balloon ride turned deadly in Caldwell County Saturday after 16 people were killed when it crashed and caught fire.
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Authorities have not said where the hot air balloon was based out of or which company was flying it, though Caldwell County Sheriff Daniel C. Law told The Associated Press that it’s the kind of situation where people can walk up and buy a ticket, unlike an airplane, which would have a list of names. The Caldwell County Sheriff’s Office said nobody on board survived. Rodolfo Gonzalez/Austin American-Statesman/via REUTERS The partial frame of a hot air balloon is visible above a crop field as investigators comb the wreckage of a crash Saturday morning, July 30, 2016, near XXX, Texas.
Troy Bradley, a hot air balloon pilot in New Mexico, said it’s unlikely that the balloon could have caught fire by itself; rather, he guessed that the balloon basket struck power lines, which perhaps ignited fuel. This is the preliminary working theory, he said.
– “First I heard a whoosh”, Margaret Wylie, who lives near the crash site, told CNN affiliate TWC.
“When I looked over toward my neighbor’s property”, Wylie said, “that’s about the time I saw flames shooting out sideways and then just a fireball”. Aerial television footage from the aftermath of the accident showed remnants of the red, white and blue balloon, adorned with a large, yellow smiley face wearing sunglasses, lying flattened at the crash site.
The accident occurred about three years after 19 people, mostly Asian and European tourists, were killed in a hot-air balloon crash in Luxor, Egypt.
“I’d never seen one like that with that many people”, Gonzales said.
FAA investigators were on their way to the site, Lunsford said, with the National Transportation Safety Board taking charge of the probe. Grosof said it’s likely a crime scene and they want to make sure they do everything correctly with the one shot they have.
The officials spoke Saturday on condition that they not be named because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
The crash near Austin, Texas is among the deadliest hot air balloon crashes in history, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
The area between Austin and San Antonio is a common place to fly balloons, Bradley said.
The highest number of deaths in a single hot air balloon crash in the country before Saturday was six, in a 1993 accident in Colorado, according to the NTSB.
– Gov. Greg Abbott expressed his condolences to the victims’ families.
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Aamodt said a ride in a hot air balloon could still be unsafe even when skies look peaceful.
