Eight dead in Brazil hot-air balloon accident
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. –AFP
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
New Straits Times
13 hours ago
- New Straits Times
India probing all angles in Air India crash, says minister
NEW DELHI: An Indian aviation minister on Sunday said investigators were probing "all angles" behind an Air India crash when asked by media about possible sabotage. All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12. Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source told AFP after the crash that the toll was 38. India's minister of state for civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, said the investigation was looking at "all angles" when asked specifically about possible "sabotage", in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV. "It has never happened before that both engines have shut off together," Mohol said earlier in the interview, in reference to theories by some experts of possible dual-engine failure. The minister added that until the investigation report is published, it would be premature to comment on the cause. The team appointed to investigate the crash started extracting data from the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders this week, in an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the disaster. Air India has said that the plane was "well-maintained" and that the pilots were accomplished flyers.-AFP
The Sun
13 hours ago
- The Sun
India plane crash probe looking at all angles: minister
NEW DELHI: An Indian aviation minister on Sunday said investigators were probing 'all angles' behind an Air India crash when asked by media about possible sabotage. All but one of the 242 people on board the Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner were killed when it crashed in the western city of Ahmedabad on June 12. Authorities have identified 19 others who died on the ground, but a police source told AFP after the crash that the toll was 38. India's minister of state for civil aviation, Murlidhar Mohol, said the investigation was looking at 'all angles' when asked specifically about possible 'sabotage', in an interview with Indian news channel NDTV. 'It has never happened before that both engines have shut off together,' Mohol said earlier in the interview, in reference to theories by some experts of possible dual-engine failure. The minister added that until the investigation report is published, it would be premature to comment on the cause. The team appointed to investigate the crash started extracting data from the plane's cockpit voice and flight data recorders this week, in an attempt to reconstruct the sequence of events leading to the disaster. Air India has said that the plane was 'well-maintained' and that the pilots were accomplished flyers.
The Star
a day ago
- The Star
Jungle cats threatened by urbanisation
A jaguar (Panthera onca) rests on the grass at the Mata Ciliar association, an organization for the conservation of biodiversity, in Jundiai, Sao Paulo state, Brazil on May 29, 2025. Twenty-five pumas and ten jaguars are currently recovering at the Brazilian Center for the Conservation of Neotropical Felines at Mata Ciliar, a site as large as 40 football fields where monkeys, wild dogs, maned wolves, ocelots, and other regional animals are also rehabilitated. (Photo by Nelson ALMEIDA / AFP) Apartment blocks and shopping centres sprout like mushrooms around a wild cat sanctuary that shelters pumas recovering from injuries suffered at the hands of mankind in Brazil's Sao Paulo state. The Mata Ciliar refuge stretches over the equivalent of 40 football fields just 90km from the state capital Sao Paulo – Latin America's biggest metropolis. Twenty-five pumas and 10 jaguars are receiving treatment at the centre – including Barreiro, a five-year-old puma named after the semi-rural neighbourhood where he was found caught in a trap made with a steel cable. Barreiro is being treated for a deep cut to the hip. 'Due to the advancement of urbanisation into its natural habitat, when the puma moves, it gets lost between roads, gated communities and other human interventions,' Mata Ciliar president Jorge Bellix said. As its habitat shrinks in step with human expansion, the puma is forced to move closer to settlements to find food – which may include pets and livestock, as its natural diet of deer and smaller wild animals gets diminished. The big cats risk being run over by cars, electrocuted by security fences or trapped in snares set by either hunters trying to catch wild boar or residents warding off predators. Some are poached for their skins or as trophies. 'If this continues, we will unfortunately witness the extinction of several (animal) species within a few years,' said Bellix, whose refuge has treated some 32,000 creatures since it was founded nearly 30 years ago. A puma (Puma concolor) is pictured at the Mata Ciliar association, an organization for the conservation of biodiversity, in Jundiai, Sao Paulo state, Brazil, on May 28, 2025. Twenty-five pumas and ten jaguars are currently recovering at the Brazilian Center for the Conservation of Neotropical Felines at Mata Ciliar, a site as large as 40 football fields where monkeys, wild dogs, maned wolves, ocelots, and other regional animals are also rehabilitated. (Photo by Carlos FABAL / AFP) Stone jungle Mata Ciliar also houses monkeys and maned wolves, and is located within the vast Mata Atlantica forest in a country with some of the highest wild cat diversity in the world. But just a few kilometers away looms the grey expanse of Sao Paulo, a metropolis of 21 million people nicknamed the 'stone jungle'. 'The situation is critical: the animals of Sao Paulo are losing the war against urbanisation,' said veterinarian Cristina Harumi, who helped save Barreiro and hopes he can be returned to the wild soon. The puma, sitting as it does at the top of the food chain, is considered a bioindicator: its disappearance would be an alarming sign of the extent of environmental degradation, she added. The puma, also known as mountain lions, is listed as 'near threatened' in Brazil by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), which maintains the 'Red List of Threatened Species', while mountain lion sub-species outside the Amazon basin are considered 'vulnerable'. – AFP
