Hot-air balloon lands right outside the back door: ‘13 people in a basket waving at us’

Hunter Perrin was watching TV Saturday morning when his doorbell started ringing vigorously. He opened his door to a neighbor, who came to tell him “they just landed in your backyard.”

“I had no idea what he was talking about,” Perrin said in a phone call Monday. It wasn’t until his wife, Jenna, who recalled hearing an unidentifiable sound just before the commotion, called him over to their back door that he understood that a hot-air balloon had just made an emergency landing in the backyard of their Temecula home.

“We both step out of the door and there’s 13 people in a basket waving at us and saying, ‘Good morning,’” he said.

A video posted by Perrin on Saturday captured his and Jenna’s astonishment at the unusual sight. Footage from a security camera shows the basket of the hot-air balloon swoop through the backyard as the passenger aircraft lands right up against their fence. In the video, which includes footage taken by Perrin on a cellphone, the passengers all appear in good spirits despite their unexpected detour.

“Even watching the video, it’s still hard to believe that that actually happened,” Perrin said. “I put that video together after everything happened, and I thought, as I was uploading it, ‘Oh, this will be neat. It’ll make some rounds on social media and maybe it’ll be popular in Temecula, because it’s a Temecula local thing.’”

Jenna Perrin explained that the hot-air balloon had run low on fuel while hovering and “hoping for winds,” necessitating the emergency landing.

“I didn’t realize how scary it can be if you have no winds,” she said. She was also amazed the pilot was able to maneuver around their house and trees to land in their backyard without any injuries or property damage.

The video follows as the passengers exit the basket before the aircraft is pushed along the backyard away from the fence to a position where it can “jump” over the house. Eventually, the balloon takes off and is guided to the street in front of the house as neighbors gather in the front yard to watch.

“As it was coming up, everybody started to laugh because it looked like [a scene] from Pixar’s ‘Up,’” Perrin said. The entire ordeal, from when the aircraft touched down until it was packed up on a truck, took about two hours.

Neighbors said the hot-air balloon poking up from the Perrins’ backyard was like a scene from the Pixar film “Up.”

(@HPerrin via YouTube)

Hunter Perrin, a software developer who created Port87, said in the two years that they’d been living in their home they had previously only caught the occasional glimpse of hot-air balloons in the distance.

“A neighbor told us we are in a hot-air balloon flight path,” Perrin said. “We didn’t even realize that. But now we certainly know.”

“The pilot did a fantastic job,” he added. “I didn’t get his name, and I kind of wish I did, because I’d love to go buy them a beer. Thanks for avoiding our house!”

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