Footage appears to show the hot-air balloon plummeting towards the ground, billowing smoke. Image / via X
Footage appears to show the hot-air balloon plummeting towards the ground, billowing smoke. Image / via X
At least eight people were killed on Sunday when a hot-air balloon carrying 21 passengers caught fire in southern Brazil, a state governor said.
It was the second fatal balloon accident in the vast South American country in less than a week.
“Eight fatalities and 13 survivors,” Santa Catarina stategovernor Jorginho Mello said on X.
Videos taken by bystanders and carried on Brazilian television showed the moment when the balloon erupted in flames above a rural area outside the Atlantic coast town of Praia Grande, a tourist hotspot popular for hot-air ballooning.
The basket carrying the passengers plummeted dozens of metres to the ground, in flames. Other images showed some of the passengers jumping.
The 13 survivors were treated at hospitals, firefighters said.
A member of the Centre for Investigation and Prevention of Aeronautical Accidents (Cenipa) walks next to the wreckage of the hot-air balloon. At least eight people were killed and 13 others were injured after the basket plummeted dozens of metres to the ground while engulfed in flames, Santa Catarina governor Jorginho Mello reported. Photo / Silvio Avila / AFP
Officials at Our Lady of Fatima hospital said of the five survivors treated there, three were in stable condition with minor injuries and two had already been discharged.
Information about the other survivors was not immediately available.
An investigation was launched to determine the cause of the accident. Weather conditions were clear at the time.
“I want to express my solidarity with the families of the victims,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said in a statement.
The pilot told officials the fire was sparked by a blowtorch - used to ignite the balloon’s main flame - in the basket, Tiago Luiz Lemos, a police official in Praia Grande, told local media.
The pilot tried to bring the balloon down as soon as the fire erupted, “and once it was close to the ground, he told the passengers to jump from the basket. But some of them couldn’t do it and the fire grew”, the official said.
A rescue team member at the crash site after a hot-air balloon carrying 21 people caught fire and plunged, in Praia Grande, a region of Santa Catarina in southern Brazil, on June 21, 2025. At least eight people were killed and 13 others were injured after the basket plummeted dozens of metres to the ground, in flames. Photo / Santa Catarina Fire Department / AFP
Four people were burned to death and four others died from injuries sustained in the fall, fire department official Zevir Cipriano Junior told reporters.
One witness told the Razao newspaper he saw “two people falling, they were on fire, the basket broke off and the balloon fell”.
Less than a week ago, a woman died during a balloon ride in southeastern Sao Paulo state.
