Qualla: 2025 Santa Catarina hot air balloon crash

2025 Santa Catarina hot air balloon crash: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. They had come for the sunrise. On the morning of 21 June 2025, twenty-one people lifted off from a field near Praia Grande in southern Santa Catarina, drawn by a region so famous for its balloons that locals call it the Brazilian Cappadocia. It was the Feast of Corpus Christi, a holiday weekend, and the basket held couples on an outing, a mother and her daughter, an ophthalmologist, a figure skater, ordinary people on a clear winter day. Two minutes into the flight, fire broke out aboard the balloon. Eight of them would not survive it.

Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

2025 Santa Catarina hot air balloon crash: The People in the Basket

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Behind the numbers were lives. The eight who died included two couples and a mother and her daughter, among them an ophthalmologist and a figure skater, most of them from Santa Catarina and neighboring Rio Grande do Sul. They had paid 550 reais each, a little over a hundred dolla...

Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

2025 Santa Catarina hot air balloon crash: Two Minutes

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. It happened fast. Investigators later concluded that the fire most likely began with the blowtorch used to heat the air that kept the balloon aloft. With flames spreading and the envelope failing, the pilot, who survived, tried to bring the balloon down low enough for the passeng...

Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

2025 Santa Catarina hot air balloon crash: A Country in Mourning

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. The grief reached from the small town up to the capital. Jorginho Mello, governor of Santa Catarina, posted a video expressing his sorrow and ordered the full machinery of the state to help the families and the survivors. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva offered his solidarity...

Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain

2025 Santa Catarina hot air balloon crash: The Risk Beneath the Beauty

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk), Public domain. Praia Grande sits in some of the most beautiful country in Brazil, ringed by the towering canyons of the Serra Geral, and on a normal day around a hundred balloons drift over it. That is how the town earned its nickname, the Brazilian Cappadocia, after the famous balloon-filled v...

Image: Turkmenistan.airlines.frontview.arp.jpg: elfuser derivative work: Elfuser (talk) | Public domain