Past Deaths Haunt Albuquerque's Balloon Fiesta

Watching all the balloons at this year's Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta has been a really cool experienced, and definitely makes me want to go up in a balloon. But talking to ground crews packing up their balloons in front of my house the other morning opened my eyes to some rare but potentially serious dangers of ballooning. Though many thousands of balloon flights have occured at the Fiesta without incident over the years, there have been several devastating fatalities. Almost always these have been the result of hitting power lines. Though most lines are buried on the north side of the city surrounding the Fiesta grounds, there are certainly high-wires around, and sometimes the balloons can stray well away from the immediate launching area, being seen coming down all over the city.

CBS News.

In 2008, a pilot was killed and his passenger seriously injured when their balloon snagged a line and threw them to the ground. The year before, a California woman fell 70-some feet to her death and several others were injured after snagging a power line. Most of these tragedies were the result of hitting power lines and either being thrown out of the gondola, or as in the case of a woman in 1998 and 2 men in '93, the gondola being severed from the balloon and plummeting to the ground.

Greg Abernathy/ask Academy’s The Catalyst.

Although these powerline accidents usually result in the balloon going up in flames, the deaths and injuries have mostly been from falls, as opposed to fire. However, fire has been responsible for several tragic deaths in more distant past of the Fiesta, before safety standards evolved into their present state. One case of this happened in 1990, when two men died after their balloon crashed into power lines and burst into flames.The biggest, perhaps most horrifying accident occurred at the 1982 Balloon Fiesta, when four people died and another five were injured when their balloon's propane tanks exploded.

Read about that incident here.