A woman who jumped about 15 metres from a blazing hot air balloon before it plunged to the ground said she knew she would die if she stayed in the basket.

Diana Rutledge spoke to reporters from the Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C., where she lay with two broken ankles, two broken heels and cracked ribs.

The hot air balloon caught fire shortly after lift off.
(Cheryl Birch/CBC)

Rutledge was one of 11 people who survived when the hot air balloon crashed into the Hazelmere RV Park in Surrey on Friday evening. Two people died in the incident, which family members witnessed from the ground.

Rutledge said she felt uneasy before the flight.

"I didn't feel right about it," she said. "I'd never done it before and once I got in that basket I didn't like it."

Rutledge said passengers aboard the balloon noticed the fire shortly after it lifted off.

The balloon came down in the Hazelmere RV Park near the U.S. border.
(Cheryl Birch/CBC)

She said a friend in the basket saw the flames before she did.

"I felt this flash of fire come past my ear and I thought, 'He [the pilot] wasn't kidding when he said this fire is going to make this balloon go up'," Rutledge said.

"And then another one came closer and [her friend] Leanne started screaming, 'Diana, we're on fire. We're on fire. We have to get out of here.'"

Rutledge said she had to make a split-second decision to save her life.

"Then I looked out again and because some people had jumped, that made the balloon go straight up. Now we're at about 50 or 60 feet and it was like do or die — jump or perish."

Smoke from the balloon crash billowed into the sky.
(Cheryl Birch/CBC)

She said she landed hard and lay on the ground begging for help as debris showered down around her.

"I couldn't stand and I was begging, 'Help me, help me. This debris is going to fall on me,'" she recalled.

Rutledge praised emergency workers for their fast response to the disaster.

With files from the Canadian Press