Private searchers join Fossett effort

MINDEN -- Authorities worried Monday that a call for private volunteers to help the government search the rugged Nevada wilderness for missing aviator Steve Fossett may attract people who don't have proper training and ultimately might need saving themselves.

The private search effort is being driven in part by hotel magnate Barron Hilton, who has opened the mile-long airstrip at his Flying M Ranch -- the same runway that Fossett took off from a week ago -- to search planes and helicopters. On Sunday, a notice was posted on Fossett's Web site calling for pilots, helicopters and volunteers to supplement the search.

While the private effort has worked side by side with the government during the eight-day hunt, officials said they are becoming worried that the latest call for volunteers could bring in people who have no experience with combing the vast, and often dangerous, landscape.

"It has not been condoned, nor is it necessarily helpful to the law enforcement community," Lyon County Undersheriff Joe Sanford said Sunday. "We don't want searchers to have to go out to look for searchers."

On Monday, Sanford explained that he was most concerned with the possibility of untrained searchers conducting independent ground searches in the rugged, sparsely populated areas where Fossett is believed to be lost. Government-backed searchers also have followed false leads submitted by people looking at satellite images of the area available on the Internet, he said.

Sanford said Monday that a lack of oversight sometimes leads to the official search effort covering ground already searched by the private effort. He said the private effort was still welcome, but he noted that it is "impossible to track."

Officials also expressed concern that participants in the National Championship Air Races and Air Show in nearby Reno starting Wednesday could hamper the search effort. They pleaded with race participants and other pilots attending the event to stay away from the search area.

The 63-year-old Fossett, a former commodities trader who was the first to circle the globe in a balloon, was last heard from Sept. 3, when he took off from Hilton's ranch. Authorities believe he was carrying only one bottle of water, but he is considered an expert pilot and survivalist.