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Search for Fossett Proves 'Frustrating'

By SANDRA CHEREB,
AP
Posted: 2007-09-10 07:44:50
Filed Under: Nation News
RENO, Nev. (Sept. 10) -- With another false sighting and frustration growing among rescue crews, the search for missing aviator Steve Fossett entered its second week Monday over the high desert and rugged mountains of western Nevada.

"This search is big, it is frustrating and it is exhausting, physically and mentally," Civil Air Patrol Maj. Cynthia Ryan said.

"What's so frustrating is we haven't found anything," added Lyon County Undersheriff Joe Sanford after another potential sighting Sunday afternoon turned up no sign of the millionaire adventurer.

The search covers 17,000 square miles -- twice the size of New Jersey -- over mostly Nevada wilderness and parts of the California southwest of the state line on the Sierra's eastern front.

But for the first time on Sunday, the focus shifted to a 50-mile radius around the private airstrip Fossett took off from on Labor Day about 80 miles southeast of Reno.

For a moment, the change in strategy appeared to pay off as leaders of the operation quickly assembled reporters for a briefing at Minden-Tahoe Airport to announce a helicopter and ground crew were en route to a possible sighting.

But a half-hour later, the ground crew arrived at the scene 30 to 40 miles east of the south end of Walker Lake and confirmed the wreckage was "not the target aircraft."

"Once again you had your hopes raised and dashed just as we have," Ryan told reporters.

The debris was from an old U.S. Navy crash, said Kim Toulouse, a spokesman for the Nevada Department of Wildlife. He had no other details.

Later Sunday, search crews discovered yet another old crash site but could tell it was not Fossett's plane without dispatching a ground crew, he said.

"We're finding them left and right. Nevada is a graveyard," Toulouse said. "The technology we have today is allowing us to find this stuff."

It was at least the eighth time since Fossett disappeared that search crews thought they had located him only to learn the wreckage came from crashes that were years or even decades old.

Fossett's wife, Peggy, remained Sunday at hotel magnate Barron Hilton's ranch. Fossett took off from it in a single-engine plane on what was to be a three-hour trip. Hilton's crews have assisted in the search.

Sanford said Sunday he had spoken to members of Fossett's family.

"The mood is very somber but very focussed," Sanford said. "I can't imagine being on the receiving end of hope that continues to turn out to be unfounded or be something we were not aware of."

Nevertheless, he said the family and search crews remain "very dedicated and very focussed."

"These are the best search and rescue people we have," Sanford said. "We are going to find Mr. Fossett and we are going to bring him home."

Fossett, a former commodities trader who was the first to circle the globe in a balloon, is considered an expert pilot and survivalist.

The focus shifted to the 50-mile circle around the airstrip because most crashes occur within that radius, Ryan said.

"We've got close to 100 percent covered, at least in some cursory fashion," Ryan said. "We have to eliminate a lot of territory."

The discovery of at least eight previously unknown wrecks suggests how difficult it might be to find Fossett's single-engine Bellanca Citabria Super Decathlon.

The Florida-based Air Force Rescue Coordination Center, which is helping coordinate the search, maintains a registry of known plane wreck sites.

The registry has 129 entries for Nevada. But over the last 50 years, aviation officials estimate, more than 150 small planes have disappeared in the state, which has more than 300 mountain ranges carved with steep ravines and covered with sagebrush and pinon pine trees. Peaks rise to 11,000 feet.

"The mountains are quite rugged, and things don't always get found," Ryan said.

Associated Press writers Scott Sonner and Martin Griffith in Reno contributed to this report.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.
2007-09-04 13:55:24
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4312 comments

jonesbarbi 07:39:53 PM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

DOES ANY ONE KNOW HOW STEVE VOTED HIS LIFE???
I KNOW MY VOTE. REPUBLICAN LIKE MY MOM WAS.!
WAS HE WITH THE DEMOCRATS??? AND PROFITING FROM WASHINGTON UNIVERSTIY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND B.J.C. HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS AND THIER GROUPE OF CEO'S BOTH PARTIES KNOW!!!! AS DOES STEVE'S FAMILY. MAYBE THE WORLD WILL FIND OUT. THAT GOD WORKS.! IT COULD TELL THE TELL. ABOUT ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH JUSTICE. FOR ALL.!
1 FOR 1, EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH. 1dem. for 1 rep.
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!!! GOD KNOWS IT IS THE COMPANY YOU KEEP.!
GOD BLESS AMERICA. LAND THAT I LOVE.! AMEN.!

jonesbarbi 07:39:52 PM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

DOES ANY ONE KNOW HOW STEVE VOTED HIS LIFE???
I KNOW MY VOTE. REPUBLICAN LIKE MY MOM WAS.!
WAS HE WITH THE DEMOCRATS??? AND PROFITING FROM WASHINGTON UNIVERSTIY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE AND B.J.C. HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS AND THIER GROUPE OF CEO'S BOTH PARTIES KNOW!!!! AS DOES STEVE'S FAMILY. MAYBE THE WORLD WILL FIND OUT. THAT GOD WORKS.! IT COULD TELL THE TELL. ABOUT ONE NATION UNDER GOD, INDIVISIBLE, WITH JUSTICE. FOR ALL.!
1 FOR 1, EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH. 1dem. for 1 rep.
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS!!! GOD KNOWS IT IS THE COMPANY YOU KEEP.!
GOD BLESS AMERICA. LAND THAT I LOVE.! AMEN.!

edwardretusaf 02:59:00 PM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

He thought that $ 199.00 was way too much to pay for a locator beacon.

lpn6188 01:15:21 PM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

i doubt they'd put this much time and effort into finding someone who didn't control a fortune. and how did this man plan to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon if he couldn't even fly a plane to it's destination a few hundred miles away? some people have more money than common sense.

fausley39 09:28:00 AM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

I'm sure that others have considered the possibilithy that he may have purposely given a false destination statement and headed in the opposite direction for reasons of his own. Not being flippant, it's an honest question. If he did that he sure caused one heck of public search expense.

knockemoff 03:26:00 AM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

he is alive

knockemoff 03:25:00 AM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

no

xfatuglyoldladyx 12:17:00 AM Sep 12 2007

Report This!

He's not lost, or missing. He is comfortably living inside one of the mountains in Nevada, with his mistress.

dabskat88 10:39:45 PM Sep 11 2007

Report This!

wolflake740, it's HIS money!!! What gives anyone else the "right" to determine how HE shoud spend it???

plansmaker 08:28:16 PM Sep 11 2007

Report This!

people, this is a case of alien abduction...like Amelia Erhhardt. simply vanished without trace...in the day and age of global position search technology. nothing can hide on the surface of planet.

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