In Texas, It Was 'Not an Everyday Rescue'

A weekend balloon outing in East Texas turned into a high-altitude rescue after a hot air balloon hit a cell tower and got stuck more than 900 feet in the air. According to the local fire department, the incident unfolded around 8:15am on Saturday in Longview, where a man and woman aboard the balloon became stranded on the tower's upper structure, reports Click2Houston. Special ops crews began climbing the tower about 30 minutes later, piecing together multiple 300-foot ropes to reach the pair, says Stephen Winchell of the Longview Fire Department, who called it "not an everyday rescue." First responders reached the balloon's occupants around 10am and secured them to the tower, and by a little after 12:45pm, they were both safely back on the ground.

The two were conscious and seemed to be unhurt, though they were taken to a hospital as a precaution. Winchell—who described the operation as "pretty smooth," given the circumstances—said the condition of the pair played a role. "If it had been people that were injured or not as capable as they, we would've had to climb out to the basket, and that would've added a significant degree of difficulty," he tells KLTV. "Their courage to climb out of the basket ... we were somewhat concerned if they were going to be capable of doing that, just from the pure mental stress of climbing out of a basket with nothing under you for 900 feet." Authorities are still investigating how the balloon ended up colliding with the tower, per Click2Houston. More here from the rescuers' perspective.