Basejumper.com - archive

Anyone know anything about this incident?

As many as 11 injured in B.C. balloon crash

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/...NStory/National/home

The paper doesn't have any details, but I'm guessing
this probably just some sort of tourist cruise?

As far as i know, the balloon was still "on a leash" to the ground when it went on fire, but then it ascented to about 300ft, some people got saved, but 2 women (one of them still a child) got burned alive.

So no one was BASE jumping?

Maybe this should be moved to the bonfire...

if so, im sure airtwardo,GrabbGrass and TKHayes will shime in with some smartass comments like: "oh, the pilot shouldn`t do stupid thing like putting the balloon in fire..

A similar thing happened to me once except without the fire and not in a tethered balloon. We were doing loads off the DZ and wearing skydiving rigs. The pilot was over temping the envelope (the balloon itself) in order to rise faster and get all the waiting jumpers up.

At about 1700-feet the top of the balloon (oddly, called the parachute in balloon speak) completely blew out. We started coming down faster and faster as the envelope began to streamer. I got my girlfriend out first, then the other two skydivers both on their first balloon jump. The first one went right away, but the last one was in a panic. I told him I was going to leave him if he didn’t go right now. He finally did and I went over the side at about 800-feet. The balloon pilot crashed hard with the balloon and lived but he was hurt pretty badly.

If we had all been non-jumpers, and couldn't lighten the balloon, there's no doubt we all would have died.

NickD
BASE 194

Wow, Nick, amazing story.

My mistake for not posting this in the bonfire. I guess that's the place for all threads about things burning... :-)

I did flag it as non-BASE, but I didn't look around hard enough for a sensible place to post it.

There's nothing wrong with putting it here. Lots of BASE jumpers make balloon jumps and maybe without thinking too much about the "balloon part."

NickD
BASE 194

top of the balloon oddly, called the parachute

Hey Nick,

Yep, the name comes from the first one used.
Early balloons frequently had a vent that could
be opened only once. Eventually someone smart
realized that being able to open and close a vent
could allow for greater altitude control so they
used an old round chute and put it in place.

Your story about a 'streamer' is the reason many
balloon pilots won't drop jumpers. The sudden
loss of ballast upsets the equilibrium and sends
the craft upward, if this force is too strong it can
push the crown in causing a catastrophic failure.

Of course I only know about this from research
and discussion with pilots...not like you who has
experienced it first hand.


I told him I was going to leave him if he didn’t go right now
Glad you got that guy out in time.
Yeah, at some point you got to save yourself.

One pilot I have ground crewed for told me about
his buddy who was about to let some jumpers out.
The instruction was to go one at a time, but for
some reason they all went at once sending the
pilot sky high, like 16,000 feet.

I see that we now have a GoogleAd:

I thought it was a joke at first... but I saw it while writting this very post.

And we got other pretty ads too on anxiety lol.

Aw, I wish I was funny enough to make stuff like that up!