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Bishop provides base in search for missing pilot |
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Monday, 10 September 2007 |
 California Civil Air Patrol pilots and support personnel look over maps and computers Thursday at the Eastern Sierra Regional Airport in Bishop, which is serving as the CAP?s Command Center for the California portion of the aerial search for missing pilot/adventurer Steve Fossett. Photo by Jon Klusmire By Jon Klusmire
Register Staff 9-8-2007
Flying under the national media’s radar, about 15 search planes and close to 40 personnel have been using the Bishop airport as their base of operations as they scour the California side of the border in the ongoing search for missing aviator Steve Fossett.
The search for the record-breaking adventurer was going forward at full throttle Thursday in California and Nevada. The search area had been expanded to 10,000 square miles, and stretches from north of Reno south to the Eastern Sierra and White Mountians around Bishop. With the aerial search teams getting no help from such now-common technology as locator beacons or even radar, the search has become an old-fashioned, labor-intensive effort involving a plane and crew flying over and observing small sections of a huge amount of difficult terrain.
Standing outside the terminal at the Bishop airport, Incident Commander Bob Keilholtz pointed to the towering White Mountains west of the airport, which are part of the search area, and commented, “it’s like trying to find a needle in that haystack.”
The California Civil Air Patrol located its command center at the Eastern Sierra Regional Airport in Bishop on Tuesday night after the first full day of searching turned up some clues that Fossett might have headed south and east and west to scout out dry lakebeds for a land-speed record attempt. On Wednesday and Thursday, more volunteer pilots who make up the California CAP flew into Bishop and checked into the Command Center to receive their flight instructions.
The Bishop airport is “an ideal base,” for the Californians’ search effort, noted Keilholtz, “because it’s close to the primary search area.”
The California CAP has the chore of searching the rugged mountains, valleys and then deserts that lie between Bridgeport and Bishop along the Sierra, and stretch east to the Nevada state line.
By flying out of Bishop, the search teams and their planes don’t have to fly far to be right in the thick of thesearch area. “We get more time in the search grid, instead of having to fly to it first,” said Keilholtz.
Fossett went missing Monday after taking off in a small plane from a private airstrip near Yerington, Nev. The millionaire adventurer is an experienced pilot and has been in more than a few crashes during his exploits, which include such feats as being the first man to fly around the world in a plane without refueling and the first to cross the Atlantic, then circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon.
He was said to be scouting possible dry lake beds where he could attempt his next exploit, breaking the land speed record, when he went missing.
The national media has flocked to the irresistible story of the record-breaking aviator getting lost on a short flight in a familiar region. The media has flooded the Minden-Tahoe Airport, center of the Nevada search effort, which has created an additional element for search commanders to deal with, one that the California crew isn’t bothered by in Bishop, said a diplomatic Keilholtz.
By Thursday, the Bishop airport Command Center was humming with sharply focussed activity as pilots, displaying their unique combination of swagger and business-like intensity, checked in before and after their assigned sorties. Each flight team typically goes out on two sorties a day, each lasting three to four hours. “It’s hard work,” said Keilholtz.
Inside the airport, two tables were covered with computer gear and maps. One table held only paper maps, and in a nod to old-school search techniques, red dots were affixed to a primary map to mark which search grid had been surveyed from the air.
In a nod to the high-tech side of the search, a separate table held a trio of computers on which aerial photos of canyons, sagebrush and the generally inhospitable terrain being searched could be observed. Thanks to the computers, the photos clearly showed a high level of detail, including trees and rocks and canyons.
One of the things that has made the search for Fossett a bit frustrating, and more complicated and time-consuming, is that the technology that has in recent years “really speeded up search efforts” hasn’t been of any help on this search, said Keilholtz.
For example, radar, locator beacons, satellite images and other such technology can typically help searchers find downed planes in days, in most cases, he noted. But Fossett’s plane was not picked up on any nearby radar during its flight, and it is not sending out an emergency locator/distress beacon, Keilholtz said.
Without that kind of electronic help, the search has become a manpower-intensive air operation, with teams of pilots assigned to fly over grid sections of about 50 square miles, he noted.
The nature of the terrain, ranging from high-desert canyons and ravines to the steep slopes and forests of the Sierra Nevada, also makes the search effort more complex, said Keilholtz.
Looking at the White Mountains again, he noted that at different times of day, different light hits or hides parts of a mountain range, and the same is true of what first appears to be desert. Plus, the flight can be bumpy – the crew can shift focus for a bit on just flying and 50 square miles is a lot of territory. So one pass over a grid usually isn’t enough. Pilots have to fly over the same area at different times and at different altitudes to conduct a thorough search, he said.
Since Fossett has been missing since Monday, the aircraft are first searching areas identified as “high probability for a possible crash, and a high survivability site,” said Keilholtz.
That means teams will look in the valley floors and other areas where an experienced pilot such as Fossett might have put the plane down in an emergency landing. Then the search will eventually move into the higher, tougher terrain.
Despite going into the fifth day of the search, “this is still a search and rescue operation,” stressed Keilholtz.
Besides more than a dozen planes on the California search area, the Nevada CAP also has about a dozen planes devoted to the search. Military aircraft, such as C-130 cargo planes and Blackhawk helicopters, are also involved. Night-vision equipment has been used to try and pick up any potential crash site or debris, and Walker Lake was searched by special radar.
Fossett, 63, holds more than 100 world records in sailing, powered flight (planes), ballooning and gliding. He “is extremely fit and athletic,” said Keilholtz, so searchers and family are still optimistic that Fossett could survive a crash and days in the backcountry.
That said, “time is not our friend,” so the CAP plans to “throw as much as we can” at the search on Friday, and over the weekend. Keilholtz said that the weekend could see even more pilots in Bishop, since the CAP volunteer pilots will have the weekend off work to participate in the search.
The Nevada CAP said it received three or four credible tips on Thursday, about Fossett’s possible whereabouts, and those leads will be followed up Friday and, if necessary, into the weekend.
Keilholtz said after this weekend the California and Nevada CAP will discuss whether to maintain the two separate Command and Flight centers, or whether to combine the operation at the Minden airport.
Although the CAP pilots are volunteers, it’s a national network of pilots who can and have showed up to join the search, said Keilholtz.
Searches of several weeks, if not longer, are not uncommon in such rugged terrain, he noted. “We can be here two to three weeks, or longer, if we have to.”
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Last Updated ( Friday, 26 October 2007 )
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