Safety first
If a balloon gets tangled in a power line, call 911 and stay clear
As hundreds of hot air balloons take to the sky during the 47th annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, it’s not unheard-of for a balloon to get caught on a power pole or an electrical line.
When that happens, officials from the fiesta and from the Public Service Company of New Mexico want everyone to know that the best course of action is to call 911 and then stay the heck away.
“Always assume a line is energized,” said Zach Johnson, the metro and northern New Mexico operations manager for PNM.
Speaking during a Wednesday safety demonstration at the Reeves Generating station off Paseo del Norte, Johnson said, “Touching a balloon that has been wrapped around a power line could cause a chain reaction that injures those attempting to provide aid, as well as everybody in the balloon.”
Because electricity “seeks the nearest path to the ground,” he said, an energized line that poses minimal danger to a balloon hanging from it “can become deadly if an onlooker touches the ground while touching a
balloon or tether at the same time.”
PNM line crews are trained and experienced at assisting balloonists entangled in poles or wires, he said. The safest thing a bystander can do is call 911 and provide the best location information possible — if the balloon is in front of a house or in someone’s backyard, nearest cross streets and recognizable landmarks.
The safest thing for people riding in the basket to do is stay in the basket and create as little motion as possible, Johnson said.
Law enforcement officers, fire crews and other first responders should immediately create a safety zone of at least 100 feet around the balloon to keep onlookers away. No one should touch downed power lines or lines with broken ends, he said.
Fire crews, he reminded, should refrain from spraying water on power lines. “Water and electricity is a deadly combination” because water conducts electricity and anyone in contact with that water can get shocked.
Ray Bair, a member of the Balloon Fiesta board of directors and a pilot who has flown during fiestas for the past 35 years, said pilots try to avoid power poles and lines, but sometimes contact appears unavoidable. When that happens, they have two options: They can ignite their burners and try to fly over the power line, or they can vent hot air from the envelope and bring the balloon down quickly.
“We advocate they aggressively vent the balloon, the idea being that if you try to fly over it and don’t make it, the power line’s contact will (likely) be at the balloon’s suspension cables or at the basket where the passengers and the pilot are,” Bair said. By venting, they will probably end up “with the balloon envelope draped over the power line, which isn’t pretty, but it’s a safer situation.”
Balloon pilots are also encouraged to assume that every power line is live. Too often, people believe that once a balloon makes contact with a power line that “it somehow triggers a breaker, or interrupter, and turns the power off and they are now safe from electrocution,” Bair said. “That is not the case.”