SAO PAULO: At least eight people were killed Saturday when a hot-air balloon with 21 passengers caught fire in southern Brazil, a state governor said.
It was the second fatal balloon accident in the vast South American country in less than a week.
“Eight fatalities and 13 survivors,“ Santa Catarina state governor Jorginho Mello said on X.
Videos taken by bystanders and carried on Brazilian television showed the moment when the balloon erupted in flames above a rural area outside the Atlantic coast town of Praia Grande, a tourist hotspot popular for hot-air ballooning.
The basket carrying the passengers plummeted dozens of meters to the ground in flames. Other images showed some of the passengers jumping.
The 13 survivors were treated at hospitals, firefighters said.
Officials at Our Lady of Fatima hospital said of the five survivors treated there, three were in stable condition with minor injuries and two had already been discharged.
Information about the other survivors was not immediately available.
An investigation was launched to determine the cause of the accident. Weather conditions were clear at the time.
“I want to express my solidarity with the families of the victims,“ Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement.
The pilot told officials the fire was sparked by a blowtorch — used to ignite the balloon’s main flame — in the basket, Tiago Luiz Lemos, a police official in Praia Grande, told local media.
The pilot tried to bring the balloon down as soon as the fire erupted, “and once it was close to the ground, he told the passengers to jump from the basket. But some of them couldn’t do it and the fire grew,“ the official said.
Four people were burned to death and four others died from injuries sustained in the fall, fire department official Zevir Cipriano Junior told reporters.
One witness told the Razao newspaper that he saw “two people falling, they were on fire, the basket broke off and the balloon fell.”
Less than a week ago, a woman died during a balloon ride in southeastern Sao Paulo state.
