16 killed in hot air balloon accident

AT LEAST 16 people are feared dead after a hot air balloon crashed in Central Texas yesterday.

According to authorities the balloon caught fire and crashed into a field near the city of Lockhart – approximately 50km south of Austin.

The Caldwell County sheriff’s office said it is working to determine the number of victims and their identities.

The land near the crash site is mostly farmland, with corn crops and grazing cattle. Cutting through that farmland is a row of massive high-capacity transmission lines about 4 to 5 stories tall.

The site of the crash appears to be right below the overhead lines, although authorities haven’t provided further details about what happened

National Transportation Safety Board spokesman Eric Weiss said the safety agency knows ‘very, very little right now’ about what happened.

Officials said a ‘significant investigation’ would be done at the site. Erik Grosof of the National Transportation Safety Board said at a news conference yesterday that a full-bore investigation would begin this morning. Sheriff Daniel C Law said passengers probably just walked up and bought tickets and that their names may not have been recorded.

Texas governor Greg Abbott asked yesterday for ‘all of Texas to join us in praying for those lost’.

The crash is likely to be one of the deadliest hot air balloon disasters on record. In 2013, 19 people, mostly Asian and European tourists, were killed when a hot air balloon went down in Luxor, Egypt.