Final Day of Fiesta Ends With Dramatic Balloon Accident
By Leslie Hoffman
The Associated Press
The final day of the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta ended with high drama Sunday when a balloon became entangled in a radio tower, forcing the pilot and two young passengers to shimmy most of the way down the nearly 700-foot-tall structure.
Bill Chapel, 69, of Albuquerque, was piloting the Smokey Bear balloon when winds blew into the radio tower near the balloon fiesta park.
"All you can do is grit you teeth and hold on to your passengers and prepare them for the impact," he said.
The hot-air balloon's canopy — shaped like the face of the famous bear that warns children against forest fires — got wrapped up around the triangular-shaped tower, leaving its gondola resting up against the structure and Chapel and his young passengers, Aaron Whitacre, 10, of Tucson, Ariz., and Troy Wells, 14, of Rio Rancho, stranded.
"I hung onto the tower with all my strength, and I got them calmed down," Chapel said.
The pilot said he didn't need to tell the boys what to do: "They climbed down the tower and I followed them."
The trio made their way slowly down the tower's interior ladder.
Steve Traynor, a photojournalist from Killeen, Texas, who was riding in a nearby balloon when Smokey Bear hit the tower, said the scene was frightening.
"We were praying we wouldn't see any bodies on the ground," he said. "Our pilot was really shook up by it."
Chapel's ex-wife, Sally, who was following her own balloon, was among those who rushed to the tower after spotting the familiar fabric flapping in the wind like a massive sail. She worried about the tower's structural integrity.
"This fellow is retired Forest Service. He is familiar with crisis; he is a strong man," she said of her ex-husband. "... He obviously kept his head and took care of his passengers."
KKOB-AM shut down its 50,000-watt transmitter and emergency crews gathered at the base of the tower, said Kathie Leyendecker, a fiesta spokeswoman.
About 100 feet above the ground, rescuers met the three, secured them with safety gear, and helped them into a utility truck bucket. The trio's journey from tower top to truck bucket played out with television news helicopters circling over about an hour.
Leyendecker said tower maintenance crews arrived to untangle the balloon from the tower and the gondola was down by 3 p.m. The rest of the balloon was removed from the tower shortly before 5 p.m.
KKOB technicians estimated about $10,000 in damage to the tower. Power was to be restored to the tower and the station was to resume broadcasting late Sunday evening.
The Federal Aviation Administration and National Transportation Safety Board were investigating the incident Sunday.
Once her ex-husband was down, Sally Chapel said he told her, "Everything's fine — but my knees. That was one long ladder."
Chapel said this was the first serious accident of his long flying career.
The retired U.S. Forest Service ranger will now turn his attention to his labor of love — the destroyed balloon he spent several years raising the money for to educate kids about the dangers of wildfires. Smokey Bear debuted at the balloon fiesta in 1993.
"We're looking at starting this all over again," he said. "It was through the sweat and tears of a lot of people that helped make this (balloon) possible."
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