This article was posted on the OSU Today website.
"OSU students duck disaster, safely land balloon. In hindsight, it may have been an enterprise doomed by circumstance: Oregon State University students lost control of a hot air balloon Wednesday morning, although they managed to land it safely in the Timberhill area.
Witness Tiffany Chona, who contributed the above photograph, said she happened to look up and see the balloon as it drifted down to land at Buttercup Drive sometime between 7 a.m. 7:30 a.m. It caught her attention.
"It's not something you see every day in the neighborhood," she said.
Chona immediately spoke to the people in the balloon to see if they were OK. She learned that they were OSU students who had launched the balloon at Martin Luther King Park (formerly known as Walnut Park), but soon realized that something was wrong.
After a brief descent to the north, they managed to get it landed before approaching the heavily wooded area just north of town.
"Luckily, they didn't hit anything in the neighborhood," she said. Once it was clear that nobody was hurt, Chona said the mood was lighter.
"We teased them, (saying), 'Next time you land a hot air balloon in the neighborhood, it better not be Duck colors.'"
No official report of the incident could be found, and Chona said she didn't know the identity of the quick-thinking, fortunate balloon pilots. Anyone with more information about the incident is invited to call city editor Theresa Novak at 758-9527 or send e-mail to theresa.novak@lee.net."
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2 comments:
Interesting article. They did a pretty good job putting this in a positive light considering...being an Eugene station the slant was a 'duck' balloon landing in 'beaver' territory.
The landing was a normal slow crew assisted landing on wide streets at a "T" intersection. The Balloon was then walked down the block to a vacant lot where deflation took place.
Many folks came out to watch and we all had a good time kidding Jesse about the color of the balloon. All very upbeat and friendly. One little boy exclaimed "they're not going to believe me at school when I tell them a Balloon landed in my street". Didn't think to get a snapshot but the beaver flag shown in the video was 2 doors down from where we deflated the balloon.
Ok, so my mindset was still on the Eugene T.V. article when I saw Marianne's posting. My comments earlier are toward the T.V. article which was more accurate, more upbeat, and most importantly didn't try to make something out of nothing.
This article is littered with inaccuracies, misinformation, biased toward sensationalism not to mention tabloid material of the lowest kind.
Jesse was never not in control, made good decisions based on his options, and executed a text book congested landing. With one exception everyone was delighted to see the balloon and accepted that there was no disaster. It is unfortunate that the reporter used the 'exception' person to base her "story" on.
Please disregard my earlier comments regarding this article.
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