ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — There have been at least three rough balloon landings this week alone, with one getting stuck in trees and two more colliding with power lines.

But none compare to this harrowing 2004 disaster. New Mexicans will surely remember seeing the Smokey Bear balloon crash into a radio tower, endangering the lives of the pilot and two young boys.

Thursday marked the 20th anniversary of that infamous crash. For the first time since that fateful day, KOB 4 spoke with one of the boys in that basket, and the man who helped bring them all back to the ground.

“That was my first Balloon Fiesta,” said Troy Wells. “I got my first chance to go up in a balloon. I didn’t quite land that one like I should have.”

Troy Wells was just a high school student from Rio Rancho in 2004 when he volunteered with the Smokey Bear balloon crew.

“They would love to pick people from the crew at the last minute to go up. And on the last day of the Balloon Fiesta, I got my chance,” Wells said.

14-year-old and 10-year-old Aaron Whitacre joined longtime balloon pilot Bill Chapel for a typical flight over Albuquerque.

“People say it’s like the earth is falling beneath you, and that was definitely my, my experience,” Wells said. “I remember we passed by the river. And when we came back up, I could see the tower there.

A radio tower 200 meters high.

“We were getting closer, but we were kind of on the way to clearing it out. But then the wind just picked up and we hit it,” Wells said. “Right before we talked about it, I’m pretty sure Bill said some profanity or something, like, oh, something like that, you know. And when he said that, I thought, ‘Oh, if the pilot says that, that’s not good.’

It wasn’t good.

“I mean, it’s like being in a car crash, right? Like you’re being tossed around,” Wells said. “You think: this is what it feels like to fall into a balloon. I was like, okay, I’m dying, you know, we’re falling out of seventy stories or whatever.

Wells says the pilot grabbed the turret to stabilize the basket, and then it was time to get out.

‘Tower goes something like this, and you hear it. You can hear the metal bending, or the cables,” Wells said. “Sounds you shouldn’t hear from transmission towers, right?”

Wells says Whitacre climbed down the ladder first, then himself, and then the pilot after turning off the balloon’s propane tanks.

“I did look down. Fortunately, I’m not someone who is particularly afraid of heights. But you know, I was afraid of those heights, because that’s how it should be,” Wells said.

The man who helped rescue the trio agreed.

“The furthest distance I had run before was probably about 100 feet,” said Christopher Perez, a retired PNM lineman.

Perez was a lineman for the PNM at the time and assumed he had been called in to provide advice.

“I looked at one of the lieutenants, or at the time the chief, and I said, ‘Well, someone’s got to go there,’” Perez said. “When I heard that there were children, I hoped that there would be someone who would have the courage and faith to do something like this for my children. So that was my motivation: thinking about my girls.”

Perez says he climbed hundreds of feet to help Whitacre down, then went back up to Wells. He then backed up a third time to help take down Chapel.

“For them to reach the heights they have already reached, kudos to them. But by the time I got to them, none of them wanted to move,” Perez said.

Everyone got back to the ground safely.

“At the time it was all over the news, and then it dawned on me. Like, whoa. That was me, I shouldn’t have survived that. You know, so that’s when I really felt a sense of appreciation for what had happened,” Wells said.

Even after all that.

“They were able to raise money and get the new Smokey the Bear balloon. Bill the pilot was going to fly it and asked me if I wanted to take it up for the first time during the Balloon Fiesta. And I said yes. So I was there the next year on the first day of Balloon Fiesta in the balloon,” Wells said.

Wells now lives on the East Coast and still watches the Balloon Fiesta with his family every year, but the poignant memories live on.

‘Every time I drive to Second Second, north or south, I see the towers. I don’t bring them up all the time, but as I drive by, I definitely think about them every time I drive by, especially now for the Balloon Fiesta,” said Perez.

The Smokey Bear balloon is still a popular sight at the Balloon Fiesta every year and has just received an upgrade.

The replacement balloon has had its day, and there’s a brand new Smokey Bear balloon taking to the skies at this year’s Balloon Fiesta.