Balloon
Flight Crew Lighter-Than-Air; Flight Crew Commercial; Flight Crew Flight Instructor
Flight Crew Last 90 Days 58; Flight Crew Total 2330; Flight Crew Type 550
Confusion; Situational Awareness
Inflight Event / Encounter CFTT / CFIT; Inflight Event / Encounter Loss Of Aircraft Control; Inflight Event / Encounter Object
Aircraft Aircraft Damaged; Flight Crew Took Evasive Action; General Evacuated
Human Factors; Weather
I lifted off with passengers in my balloon. I flew to the east side of [location ZZZ] and I began to come down to an area where I could land. This was a fairly quick descent of approximately 800 feet per minute. The balloon rotated around as I came down and I slowed the descent as we came down right above the buildings. As I rotated the balloon; so I would be in the front facing the direction of travel; there was a line of trees ahead of me. As I ascended up over the trees I saw a power line directly in my flight path about 20-30 feet away. The balloon was slowly ascending toward the power line at about 100 feet per minute and I knew at this point that there was no way I could avoid contact with the power line. This was approximately 50 minutes into the flight. I yelled at the passengers; 'Power line! Everybody get down!' I quickly turned off the propane on the side of the basket that was going to hit the lines so if the propane line was cut; it wouldn't spray fire everywhere. I then reached across and activated the burners on the opposite side in an attempt to get the balloon to rise enough so the power line would not be able to make contact with the support cables.The balloon did make contact with the power line; just above the leather bolster; causing a huge explosion and a large amount of heat. The contact with the power line cut through the metal support cables on one corner of the basket in the pilot compartment; making the basket lean heavily to the unsupported corner. The loss of those support cables freed the basket from the power line and the balloon began to ascend again. I was barely able to reach the vent lines and the burner but I was able to slow the ascent and was able to use the remaining burner to slow the descent down for a soft; safe landing in a parking lot. As I descended into the parking lot there was smoke coming from the bottom side of the wicker basket. Once the balloon was stopped and the rapid deflation top was activated; I used my hand held fire extinguished to put out the possible fire. One of the passengers said they could see flames coming from the basket so I had all of the passengers exit the balloon. A truck had pulled into the parking lot that had several small fire extinguishers that we used to finally put out the fire.I checked with the passengers and they advised me that there were no injuries. The fire department responded and put more water on the burned area of the wicker basket to assure the fire was out.
Balloon pilot reported that a sudden gust of wind during landing caused the balloon to impact power lines.