ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (KMID/KPEJ) – Video showed a hot air balloon hitting an old cottonwood tree at the former Club Rio Rancho Golf Course, with two people inside about 25 feet above the ground.
Emergency crews responded around eight, finding the gondola tangled in branches with a pilot and a passenger inside. Fire crews eventually pulled down the pilot, John Schoone from the Netherlands, who was riding with one other person. One of the two people was taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
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“We had a little bit of a thing with our drop line we had to do a drop line landing where we throw a big roll of kind of like seat belt material out for the crew on the ground to grab us. We kind of had a miss calculated and throw. The crew did good. Recovered. Got us right in here which is where we were originally aiming for,” said Shawn Krause.
Fiesta organizers said they only had one report of a crash or hard landing on Thursday.