Crews rescue 2 from hot-air balloon entangled on Texas communications
tower
[March 03, 2026]
LONGVIEW, Texas (AP) — Crews in East Texas rescued two people
stranded hundreds of feet in the air after a hot-air balloon became
entangled on a communications tower over the weekend.
Firefighters responding to the tower on Saturday morning found the
balloon entangled more than 900 feet (274 meters) above the ground,
according to officials in Longview, a city of more than 80,000 about 120
miles (193 kilometers) east of Dallas. |
In this photo released by the Longview Fire Department, firefighters
work to extract two balloonists from a balloon tangled on a
communications tower on Saturday, Feb. 28, in Longview, Texas. (Longview
Fire Department via AP) |
|
The complex, hourslong rescue involved more than a dozen
firefighters stationed at various heights along the tower. It
took them about an hour to climb up to the man and woman in the
balloon's basket and to give them ropes and harnesses to help
them escape.
It was another hour before they were secured inside the tower
and could begin their descent, which took nearly two more hours,
Longview Fire Marshal Marcus Delaney said at a news conference.
Both were taken to a hospital as a precaution, Delaney said.
Images and video from the scene show the balloon's multicolored
fabric ripped in places and wound around the guidewire and tower
with the basket hanging below. Each balloonist can be seen
climbing out of the basket in a harness and swinging over to the
tower to the waiting rescuers.
“I think they felt better once we had harnesses on them,” Lt.
Stephen Winchell said at a news conference after the rescue,
noting that the basket was swaying in the breeze.
“As we teach rope classes, this is exactly one of the scenarios
we talk about as kind of the Super Bowl of rope rescue,”
Winchell said. They’ve talked before about the logistical
challenges posed by this tower, one of the tallest in the area,
and what to do if a hot-air balloon gets stuck in a power line
or a tree.
“We just didn’t expect today that both of those scenarios would
get combined into one very tall rescue,” he said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said Monday that it will
investigate the incident involving the Cameron Z-77 balloon.
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