The organizer of the Spirit of Boise Balloon Classic says a deadly hot air balloon crash in central Texas that claimed the lives of 16 people this weekend is hitting the entire balloon community hard.
"Just this one day, this one day in those thousands of flights, things started to go wrong," said Scott Spencer, who is also a hot air balloon pilot and owner of Boise-based Spencer Air. "It all boils back to the pilot and his ability to make a decision to go fly or stay in bed."
On Sunday investigators confirmed that the balloon likely hit power lines about eight miles from its launch point, before it caught fire and plummeted to the ground.
Officials with the National Transportation Safety Board say balloon material was found about three quarters of a mile from the basket and each of the 16 victim's bodies were discovered near the basket.
"Was it the decision to go fly in the first place?" said Spencer. "Maybe, but that's the first stone on an unsteady foundation."
The balloon was scheduled to launch early Saturday morning, but that was delayed at least 20 minutes leaving officials to wonder if weather played a factor.
"Was it too windy when it came time to land?" said Spencer. "Was there not enough visibility? Here's the second stone."
"I looked off over there and the next thing I knew I saw a big fireball go up," said Margaret Wylie, a witness to the crash. "Earlier in the morning it was foggy, but at the point and time the balloon went down, I didn't really see that much haze."
Spencer says if he even has a feeling there is undesirable weather, his balloons stay on the ground.
"Weather plays a gigantic role in ballooning," said Spencer. "You get out in an open prairie like that where there's nothing obstructing the wind, it's not unusual for those guys to fly in 14-15 miles an hour winds anyway, something we would never do here in Boise."
The human, the machine, and the environment - three things investigators will be looking at in the next few days.
"Our focus is to work on scene to document the wreckage and to gather what I refer to as the perishable evidence the information that goes away with the passage of time," said Robert Sumwalt, an official with the NTSB.
"Our hearts are broken for these people, the families that are effected," Spencer said. "It goes farther than ballooning."