A hot air balloon ride ended roughly in Pahrump, Nevada, 50 miles west of Las Vegas, on Thursday when the craft made a hard landing and injured several people on board.
The Nye County Sheriff’s Office said the balloon, which had 10 on board, landed on a dry lake bed at around 6:30 a.m., with one person suffering a severe head injury and others sustaining second and third-degree burns from a fire along with blunt force injuries, according to Las Vegas’ KTNV-TV.
The hard landing helped ignite the fire.
Nye County Sheriff Joe McGill told Vegas’ KLAS-TV, “The occupants of the basket all fell on top of each other, and also during a rolling or bumping on the ground or whatever, the gas actuator was bumped, which caused the gas to ignite.”
Brant Kairit, who was on board the craft with his family, told Henderson’s KVVU-TV, “It was a wonderful experience until the last 30 seconds. In the last 30 seconds, we were to land and hit the ground. The baskets are shaped like a figure 8, rectangular, so we landed and went up in the air for a little bit, 20, 30 feet, and it tipped over on its side with the smaller rectangular part on the ground.”
Mr. Kairit also said his wife suffered some of the worst injuries, including broken bones, and that she was due to have surgery Saturday.
The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the incident, according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
