One person died in an incident involving a hot air balloon in Alqueva

One person died in an incident involving a hot air balloon this Sunday morning in the Alqueva dam region.

Initial information, confirmed by Civil Protection, stated that a person had died following the fall of a hot air balloon. However, the GNR Territorial Command of Évora guaranteed that the person did not fall.

According to information obtained by DN from Civil Protection, at 12:15 pm the victim had fallen from the basket of a hot air balloon and was being evaluated by a medical team and firefighters. At 12:35 pm, the same source confirmed that the victim died, having been declared dead by the VMER (Emergency and Resuscitation Medical Vehicle) doctor.

However, at 1 pm, the Évora Territorial Command of the GNR of Évora clarified to DN that the victim did not, after all, fall from the hot air balloon basket. According to the commander, the person started the tour but did not want to continue the journey, which led the person responsible to land the balloon and leave her on the ground, having continued the flight with the rest of the group and contacted the support team to to go look for it. Upon arriving at the location, in the municipality of Mourão, that team found the person inanimate in the water.

The victim is a 55-year-old man, according to the same source.

The commander of the Évora Territorial Command of the GNR, who says he does not know the origin of the information that the person had fallen from a hot air balloon, indicated that the investigation will continue, under the responsibility of the PJ.

The alert for the incident was given at 10:19 am by the balloonist’s support team.