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Kicker: Tangled at 1,000 feet

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WORLD Radio - Kicker: Tangled at 1,000 feet

A hot-air balloon crash into a Texas radio tower sparks a dramatic rescue as firefighters scale the towering structure to reach the stranded passengers


Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: A balloon ride over East Texas turned into a harrowing rescue nearly a thousand feet up.

Saturday morning, a hot-air balloon slammed into a radio tower and got tangled up in its guy wires.

It took 14 firefighters an hour to climb the tower to save the stranded balloonists.

Meantime, the basket just swayed in the breeze with ripped up balloon fabric wrapped around the tower. After the rescuers got to the pilot and passenger, then came the hard part: getting them down.

It took about two hours to hand off the balloonists rope-by-rope all the way down.

Fireman Stephen Winchell.

WINCHELL: Thankful for their sweat equity and just the Lord being with us and answering prayers allows us to have a very good outcome.

One firefighter who helped lead the rescue later had a surprise confession.

Despite nearly two decades of this, he doesn’t really like heights.

It’s The World and Everything in It.


WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.

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