This was first posted here two years ago today, but seemed timely. A new Smokey Bear balloon was constructed after this incident and is in this year’s Fiesta.
One of the reasons NewMexiKen likes looking up at balloons, but doesn’t ever intend to be a passenger. If God intended for us to fly he’d put us in 757s.
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.
From AP.
The radio station, KKOB, shut down its 50,000 watt transmitter during the emergency. Damage to the tower is estimated at $10,000. The Smokey Bear balloon was destroyed.