BERNALILLO — The seventh day of the 37th annual Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta was marred by a fatal accident near NM 528, just south of the new Wal-Mart, Friday morning.
An unidentified New Jersey balloonist was killed and another balloonist in the gondola suffered severe trauma after one of numerous “hard landings” in the northern Rio Rancho area.
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The two men then fell out, one landing in brush on the embankment of an arroyo, where he was later pronounced dead, and the other in the arroyo. The injured man, who also remained unidentified at press time, was airlifted to University Hospital in Albuquerque.
Marguerite Apodaca and her daughter, Amber Archuleta, said they saw the gondola ablaze.
“I was in my house, getting ready to go to work,” she said. “The power flickered. (We went outside) and saw a fire in the bottom of the gondola and saw two things fall out.”
“It was so scary. I called 911,” added Archuleta. “It was the worse feeling I ever had — I was in tears.”
She said her hands were shaking so badly she was unable to videotape the incident on her cell phone.
Mark Oberer, who also lives in northern Rio Rancho, said he had been watching balloons in the area “floating softly — and then, boom. I got in my Jeep to go check on it.”
Firefighters, rescue crews and police responded from Rio Rancho, Sandoval County and Bernalillo departments, while the New Mexico State Police and Federal Aviation Administration will handle the investigation, according to Bernalillo police chief Fred Radosevich.
He said one of his officers was the first to the scene, after noticing the traffic lights at Enchanted Hills Boulevard and NM 528 went dead.
After the men fell from the gondola, the balloon drifted north, with three propane tanks falling to the ground. Two of them, which fell on the east side of NM 528 near Rinker Materials, were said to be leaking when firefighters found them while another landed on the west side of NM 528. None of them caused any damage. The destroyed gondola and balloon continued to drift north, eventually landing in a remote section of San Felipe Pueblo.
Several other people, including an 11-year-old boy, were hurt after balloons, blown in a northwest direction after taking off from Balloon Fiesta Park, had trouble landing after the wind speed increased.
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