Hot air balloon crashes in Texas - all 16 on board killed

A hot air balloon flight, organized by the Heart of Texas Hot Air Balloon Rides company, crashed with at least 16 people on board in Texas and, as per officials, there are no survivors. US investigators say that the basket portion of the balloon caught fire before the craft came down in a field near the city of Lockhart, located some 30 miles (50 km) south of Austin.
It seems there are massive power lines that are above the place where police tape is marked off.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 31 July 2016.

It is believed that the flight encountered difficulties about halfway through the journey and, the company's chief pilot, Skip Nichols, is one of those who was killed in the crash. This accident is likely to be one of the deadliest hot air balloon crashes on record. Officials from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said there was a "significant loss of life".
The authorities are facing difficulties with identification of the victims because, for such rides, people could just walk up and buy a ticket, unlike an airplane, which would have a list of names and details of passengers. Incidentally, three years ago, 19 people - many of them tourists - lost their lives after a hot air balloon came down after a mid-air explosion in Egypt.


Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org

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Torrential rains in Texas and Kansas have taken at least two lives and five others are believed to be missing. Officials have said that though the threat of severe weather had lessened in Texas over the long holiday weekend, the problem now would be on swollen rivers and waterways that are slowly rising and could, in turn, flood homes.
This has been reported in foxnews.com dated 28 May 2016.

Other parts of the U.S. also got drenched including Kansas. Moreover, Tropical Storm Bonnie has formed in the Atlantic Ocean and has brought rain and wind to the coast of South Carolina. Considering the rising water levels in several Houston-area rivers and creeks, officials of Harris County has asked about 750 families in the Northwood Pines subdivision to voluntarily evacuate their homes and apartments.
Tropical Storm Bonnie has formed about 125 miles off the coast from Charleston, South Carolina, and, as per forecasters, was moving northwest near 10 mph with top sustained winds of 40 mph. Bonnie is the season's second-named tropical storm and it is emerging just four days before the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season as per the National Hurricane Center in Miami.


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(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)


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The Blanco River rose by 26ft in one hour and, nearly 350 homes in the town of Wimberley, Texas, were washed away by the floods. In the nearby city of San Marcos, people were ordered to evacuate their homes even as the flood waters rose and converted normally bone-dry streets into meandering rivers.
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One of the dead was of a firefighter from Claremore, Oklahoma – he was swept away while he was trying to rescue 10 people in high water. The body of another man was recovered from a flooded area along the Blanco River.
(Image courtesy wikimediacommons.org)


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