The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Probe starts in hot-air balloon crash
At least 16 people are killed in fiery accident that ends in pasture south of Austin.
LOCKHART, TEXAS — A hotair balloon carrying at least 16 people caught fire and crashed in central Texas on Saturday, federal officials said, and the local authorities said no one had survived.
Lynn Lunsford, a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration, said in a statement that the balloon crashed into a pasture near Lockhart, about 30 miles south of Austin, after catching fire. The accident occurred shortly after 7:40 a.m. local time, he said.
In a brief telephone interview, Lunsford said officials were on their way to the site, and that the National Transportation Safety Board had been notified. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation.
The names of the pilots and passengers and their relations to one another were not released. Lunsford said he did not know what had led to the crash or if there had been a distress call.
Caldwell County Sheriff Daniel Law said in a statement, “It does not appear at this time that there were any survivors.”
Margaret Wylie, 66, who lives a quarter-mile from the crash site, said she saw the balloon explode into a fireball after it struck the ground on a neighbor’s property. She said she had been at her back porch when her dog “really started raising the roof.”
“When I looked over toward my neighbor’s property that’s about the time I saw flames shooting out sideways and then just a fireball,” Wylie said. “At 66, that’s not something I want to see again.”
Erik Grosof, an official with the NTSB, said the crash had been classified as a major accident because of its “significant loss of life.” A full NTSB investigative team was en route, he said, and the FBI was asked to help look at the evidence, a normal request after major accidents.
Sixteen deaths would rank the accident as one of the worst hot-air balloon crashes in history, surpassed only by a crash in Luxor, Egypt, that killed 19 people in February 2013.
In that crash, the balloon was sailing over archaeological sites at dawn when a fire caused an explosion in a gas canister and the balloon plummeted more than 1,000 feet to the ground. Two people survived the crash — the pilot and a passenger who jumped from the basket at an altitude of about 30 feet. Nineteen tourists died, including the husband of the surviving passenger.
Before Saturday, the worst balloon accident in the United States was in August 1993 in Woody Creek, Colo., when a wind gust blew a balloon into a power line complex. The basket was severed and fell more than 100 feet to the ground, killing all six people aboard.
Replying to a question at a news conference, Grosof said it was his “understanding” that the balloon tour was run by a company called Heart of Texas.
Calls to the company were not answered, but a person who spoke at its reservation service said the company offered flights in the Austin area coinciding with the sunrise. She declined to speak about the accident.