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Monday, October 08, 2007

One Dead in Balloon Crash

By Olivier Uyttebrouck/
Journal Staff Writer
      A woman fell 60 to 70 feet to her death after the hot-air balloon in which she was riding got snagged on a power line near Interstate 25 and Montano, then suddenly broke free and she fell from the gondola, eyewitnesses told the Journal.
    The woman's name was still being withheld, but State Police Sgt. K. Bruno said the name of the pilot, who stayed with the balloon until it crashed across I-25 near Vassar and Comanche NE, was Tom Reyes.
    Reyes is listed as the pilot of the Albuquerque-based Heavenly Ride, but State Police and officials at the 2007 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta have not confirmed the name of the balloon.
    Two other passengers were on board the balloon as it crashed near Vassar and Comanche, east of the diversion channel, Bruno told the Journal.
    Reyes suffered only minor scrapes as the balloon came down, but the two passengers — whose names also weren't released — were taken to University of New Mexico Hospital where Bruno thought they were being treated for broken bones.
    State Police Sgt. Andrew Tingwall told The Associated Press that the pilot was trying to land the balloon and had thrown out a tether line when the balloon began to rise again and struck some nearby power lines.
    Eyewitnesses at the scene of the fatality said the balloon's gondola appeared to become impaled on a fiber-optic cable and the safety line was attached to a truck which pulled against the strong south wind in an effort to keep the balloon upright.
    "We were trying hard to keep that balloon from tipping over," Arby's employee Michael Reed told the Journal.
    All the time bystanders were struggling with the rope in what Reed called a "tug of war" with the wind, the pilot was firing up the propane tanks.
    "He had to keep giving it flame to keep the basket right side up," said Reed.
    Suddenly, the gondola popped free of the cable and the balloon shot into the air, but not before the gondola tipped, catapulting the woman out of the basket and onto the ground, along with equipment and propane tanks.
    Paramedics arrived quickly at the scene and worked for 5 or 10 minutes to revive the woman, but without success, Tingwall told the Journal.
    Following this morning's mass ascension and fatal crash, officials at the 2007 Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta canceled the rest of the morning's events.
    Fiesta officials have scheduled a news conference at 1:30 p.m. today at Balloon Fiesta Park.