HOPEWELL, Va. (WRIC) — A hot air balloon made an unexpected landing at a middle school in Hopewell, Virginia, over the weekend.
Shortly before 5:25 p.m. Sunday, the balloon’s occupants called emergency services looking for a safe place to land in the city after they had been blown off their original course.
Authorities created a safe landing space at Carter G. Woodson Middle School near Cavalier Square, where the balloon eventually touched down.
According to authorities, units from Hopewell Fire & EMS and the Hopewell Police Department responded and assisted in clearing a safe space for the balloon to land. There were reportedly no injuries.
Husband and wife Rob and Wendy Stueber told WRIC it was a normal Sunday night before dinner when the unexpected event occurred. The two saw the balloon from their window and knew exactly where it was headed.
“Heading towards Cavalier Square…and it was getting kind of low to the ground, so I started hollering for him, ‘If you want to see it, you better get out here,” Wendy Stueber said.
And that’s what her husband did. He went live on Facebook, recording the emergency landing in real time.
“Oh that poor bugger, he is so lucky! Not to hit any of these power lines, to get caught in the trees,” Rob Stueber said as he recorded the balloon’s emergency landing.
Rob and Wendy Stueber, along with many others that were watching, had one question going through their mind: Why was there a hot air balloon flying this close to the ground?
“I wonder where the heck they came from. Pretty much everybody was like, ‘Oh my God, what’s going on? This is crazy,” Rob Stueber said. “Not only that, everybody was remarking on how lucky the person was to be able to land where they were landing. Everybody was really shocked and relieved because it definitely could have turned out very bad for the person involved.”
Hopewell Fire was unable to tell WRIC where the hot air balloon was coming from or where the passengers were headed.
