2 Dead in Canada Hot Air Balloon Fire

Flames consume motor homes at the Hazelmere trailer park after a hot air balloon whose basket was engulfed in flames crashed into it shortly after takeoff in Surrey British Colombia Canada Friday evening Aug. 24, 2007. Witnesses said passengers screamed and jumped to the ground according to witnesses. The balloon reportedly took off from a grassy field with 12 passengers. The balloon crashed in the trailer park and campground , injuring as many as 11 people, police and local reports said. Two additional people were unaccounted for. (AP Photo/Don Randall) Mandatory Credit: Don Randall (Don Randall - AP)

"The thing went up about 400 feet in the air at which point it melted enough of the balloon _ it collapsed," said Don Randall, a resident of the trailer park who took pictures of the scene. "The basket was basically a fireball. It just dropped like a stone," he added.

"I'm just thinking, 'Oh geez, I hope there's nobody in that thing. It's basically a burning death up there,'" he said.

Smoke could be seen billowing from the crash site from miles away.

Another resident, Karen Ashby, held back tears while she explained how she watched the coroner sift through the blackened wreckage.

"They found the bodies in here," Ashby said. "I watched them take them out."

The cause of the accident was not immediately known. Weather conditions were clear at the time of the sunset flight.

"People were screaming and trying to get out," Frank Hersey said Friday night near a grassy field where several of the injured were being attended to by ambulance crews.

Perry Kendall said he saw what looked like something out of a movie.

"It was horrifying," said a shaken Kendall. "Just looking at people screaming and jumping out of there. Some of them, I think, had fire on their clothes. It was just awful."

Witnesses also said propane tanks from the balloon shot off and landed on the Hazelmere RV park below, setting fire to three trailers and several vehicles. No one was reported hurt in those blazes.

"We're exceptionally lucky that nobody in any of these three trailers or in the vehicles that were destroyed were caught in them," Morrow said.

The hot-air balloon, operated by Fantasy Balloons Charters based in Langley, British Columbia, was one of several balloons in flight at the time. The balloon that burned, Kageorge said, was about nine stories high.

There was a similar accident earlier this month in the central Canadian province of Manitoba, Manitoba, where 12 people were injured.

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Associated Press writers Rob Gillies and Charmaine Noronha in Toronto and Nahal Toosi in New York contributed to this report.