On June 26, 2021, a terrible disaster occurred in new Mexico, usa, in a busy street in Albuquerque, people watched a flying hot air balloon, the basket fell off from more than 30 meters high to the ground, and then started to burn, although passers-by struggled to save, all 5 people in the basket were still killed; and the hot air balloon fell on the power line in the middle of the street, causing the power outage of 13,000 residents.
Albuquerque is the largest city in New Mexico with a population of over 900,000 and hosts the Hot Air Balloon Festival every October, the world's largest international hot air balloon carnival. Albuquerque holds a large-scale hot air balloon lift-off every year, and more than 500 hot air balloons rise into the sky in two waves, and the whole sky is covered with colorful hot air balloons, which is very spectacular and is also the favorite painting subject of local artists. Even at night, a large number of hot air balloons are illuminated by propane burners, dreamlike, like a fairytale.
Hot air balloons are injected into the airbags by producing hot air by combustion, and due to the expansion of the volume of hot air, the air density inside the airbags is smaller than that of the outside, thus creating buoyancy to lift the load into the sky. The earliest hot air balloon actually appeared in China's Three Kingdoms period, which is the famous Kong Ming Lantern, which is said to have been invented by Zhuge Liang to transmit military signals. But like many other inventions, for the next two thousand years, the Kong Ming lamp has always been the Kong Ming lamp, and there is no longer any development and application.
It wasn't until 1783 that the French papermakers, the Brothers Montgoefee, invented the hot air balloon on the same principle and performed for the king and 130,000 citizens, and a chicken, a duck, and a sheep became the first animals on the planet to carry a human aircraft; two months later, on November 21, the Montgolfy brothers performed a manned flight show, a full 120 years before the Brothers' plane.
Because the earliest hot air balloons required a brazier to burn solid fuel to heat the air, it was very impractical and inconvenient, so it was soon replaced by a smaller hydrogen balloon invented by Professor Jacques Charles in December 1783, and the balloon flight was dominated by hydrogen balloons for nearly 200 years. It was not until the 1950s, when people invented the convenient and inexpensive bottled gas, that hot air ballooning revived. In the 1980s, China introduced the first hot air balloon, and Zhuge Liang pounded the coffin board for two thousand years, and finally put down his fist in the coffin.
Hot air balloons are considered to be very safe flying tools because of slow take-off, slow landing, and can only fly in good weather; hot air balloons generally have two sets of independent gas systems to provide safety redundancy; in addition, even if there is a serious failure, the air in the airbag will slowly cool down, so that the airbag becomes a parachute, slowly drifting to the ground, landing speed is slower than the parachute parachute landing; in addition, the pilot of the hot air balloon also has to carry out special collision avoidance training of the power line. Collisions with power lines are actually very rare. According to the U.S. Aviation Administration, hot air balloons are the safest way of all air travel, with few catastrophic accidents.
However, the hot air balloon can not guarantee absolute safety, because the hot air balloon has no power, difficulty in control, sudden bad weather or failure, may still lead to the occurrence of disaster accidents. Hot air balloon mainly by heating the gas in the capsule to regulate buoyancy, the temperature in the capsule will usually reach about 120 degrees, if the temperature is too high, the load is too large, the sphere is aging, it is possible to bring safety hazards; in addition, although the hot air balloon is extremely simple in structure, but there is a problem with the burner, fuel leakage, hose rupture, cyst hole, etc., coupled with the pilot's poor disposal, it will still form a safety hazard.
According to the United States, there have been 12 hot air balloon accidents in the United States since 2008. There have been two incidents in Rio Rancho, just outside Albuquerque, including the death of a passenger who was ejected from a pod after a hard landing. In July 2016, a hot air balloon in Texas crashed into a high-voltage line, caught fire and burned, killing all 16 crew members, the worst hot air balloon disaster in U.S. history and the second largest in the world.
The world's largest hot air balloon disaster occurred in Egypt. In February 2013, in the village of Hagel Dahabia in Luxor, Egypt, a hot air balloon carrying 21 passengers (including the driver) took off when the pilot operated the balloon landed a few meters above the ground due to a fuel pipeline leak, and the fire quickly engulfed the gondola. The driver did not care to close the valve, and jumped out of the basket with a passenger, some ground staff in order to take care of them also loosened the tether, resulting in the burning balloon in the case of weight reduction, gusts of wind raids rapidly rise, 7 passengers jumped from the height, the others were taken to a height of 300 meters to burn alive, after which the balloon wreckage and passengers fell to the ground, a violent explosion, several kilometers away can be heard. The disaster eventually killed 19 people, including nine visitors from Hong Kong, China.
In 1989, two hot air balloon collisions occurred in Alice Springs, Australia, resulting in the deaths of 13 people. According to incomplete statistics, at least 178 people have been killed in hot air balloon accidents since the first hot air balloon (including hydrogen balloon) fatalities occurred in 1785.
Guilin Yangshuo also had a hot air balloon explosion accident in 2009, due to the excessive landing, the gondola hit the ground causing the cylinder to leak and burn, two drivers and a passenger jumped, resulting in the weight of the balloon to be reduced and exploded, and the remaining 4 Dutch tourists fell from the sky and died immediately.
So it is difficult to escape from a hot air balloon disaster, and once someone escapes, it may lead to the balloon rising rapidly, taking others into the air and burning them alive; unless everyone jumps together, but in an emergency, this is simply impossible.