When millionaire Steve Fossett’s plane disappeared over the Nevada range in 2007, the swashbuckling adventurer had been the subject of two previous emergency rescue operations thousands of miles apart.
And that prompts a poignant question: After a sweeping search for the wealthy risk-taker ends, who should pay the bill?
In recent days, the massive search for a submersible that went missing during a north Atlantic descent to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has refocused attention on that conundrum. And with rescuers and the public first rescuing and then mourning those on board, it once again made for an uncomfortable conversation.
“Five people have just lost their lives and when we start talking about insurance, all the rescue efforts and the cost seem heartless – but the thing is, at the end of the day , there are costs,” said Arun Upneja, dean of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration and a tourism researcher.
“There are many people who say, ‘Why should society spend money on a rescue effort when (these people) are rich enough to be able … to do these dangerous activities?'”
Attention has been drawn to that question because wealthy travelers in search of singular adventures spend big on scaling peaks, sailing oceans and flying into space.
The US Coast Guard declined Friday to provide a cost estimate for its efforts to find the Titan, the submersible investigators said exploded not far from the world’s most famous shipwreck. The five missing people include a billionaire British businessman and a father and son from one of Pakistan’s most prominent families. The operator charged the passengers $250,000 each to join the trip.
“We cannot provide monetary value in Search and Rescue cases, because the Coast Guard does not cover the cost of saving a life,” the agency said.
While the Coast Guard’s cost for the mission is likely to run into the millions of dollars, it is generally prohibited by federal law from collecting fees related to any search or rescue service, said Stephen Koerting, a US attorney in Maine specializing in maritime law..
But that doesn’t address the larger issue of whether wealthy travelers or companies should be held accountable by the public and governments for exposing themselves to such risk.
“This is one of the most difficult questions to try to find an answer to,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, which announced an investigation into government-funded rescues from British billionaire Richard Branson’s hot air balloon exploits. in the 1990s.
“It’s not really about government spending, or maybe not primarily about government spending, but you can’t help but wonder how limited resources can be used by rescuers,” Sepp said.
The need for such resources was spotlighted in 1998 when Fossett’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe in a hot air balloon ended up plunging into the ocean 500 miles off Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force sent a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft to search for him. A French military plane dropped a 15-man life raft to Fossett before he was picked up by a yacht.
Critics suggested Fossett should foot the bill. He rejected the idea.
At the end of the same year, the US Coast Guard spent more than $130,000 to save Fossett and Branson after their hot air balloon fell into the waters of Hawaii. Branson said he would pay if the Coast Guard requested it, but the agency did not ask.
Nine years later, after Fossett’s plane disappeared in Nevada on a short flight, the state’s National Guard launched a months-long search that found the wreckage of several other decades-old crashes that went undetected. the millionaire.
The state says the mission will cost taxpayers $685,998, with $200,000 covered by a private contribution. But when the administration of Gov. Jim Gibbons to seek compensation for others, Fossett’s widow refused, noting that he had spent $1 million on his own private search.
“We believe that the search made by the state of Nevada is a cost to the government to take the government action,” wrote an attorney for the Fossett estate.
Risky adventurism is not unique to the wealthy.
The pandemic has driven a surge in visits to places like national parks, increasing the popularity of climbing, hiking and other outdoor activities. Meanwhile, the proliferation of cellphones and services has left many feeling that if there are problems, help is just a call away.
Some places have laws often called “stupid motorist laws,” where drivers are forced to pay the emergency response bill when they ignore barricades on flooded roads. Arizona has such a law, and Florida’s Volusia County, home to Daytona, enacted a similar law this week. The idea of a similar “stupid hiker law” is a frequently debated matter in Arizona as well, where there are many unprepared people who need to be rescued in the triple-digit heat.
Most officials and volunteers running the search efforts are opposed to charging for help, said Butch Farabee, a former ranger who has participated in hundreds of rescue operations in the Grand Canyon and other national parks and wrote several books on the subject.
Searchers worry that if they are charged with rescuing people “they won’t call for help when they need to and by the time they do it will be too late,” Farabee said.
The tradeoff is that some may accept significant help. Farabee recounts a call in the 1980s from a lawyer who underestimated the effort required to hike from the Grand Canyon. The man asked for a helicopter rescue, mentioning that he had an important meeting the next day. The guard rejected the request.
But that’s not an option when the lives of the adventurers, some of whom are relatively wealthy, are in grave danger.
In Mount Everest, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in permit and expedition fees to climb. Several people died or went missing while hiking the mountain every year – prompting an emergency response from local officials.
While Nepal’s government requires climbers to have rescue insurance, the scale of rescue efforts can vary, with Upneja estimating that some can cost “several tens of thousands of dollars.”
Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not respond to a message seeking comment.
At sea, wealthy yachtsmen seeking speed and distance records also repeatedly require rescue when their voyages go astray.
When the yacht of Tony Bullimore, a British millionaire on a round-the-world voyage, capsized 1,400 miles off the Australian Coast in 1997 it looked like he was doomed. Clinging inside the hull, he ran out of fresh water and almost no air.
When a rescue ship arrived, he desperately swam to the surface.
“I started looking back on my life and thought, ‘Well, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done most of the things I wanted to,'” Bullimore said afterward. “If I had to choose words to describe it, it would be a miracle, an absolute miracle.’
Australian officials, whose forces rescued a French yachtsman the same week, were more measured in their assessment.
“We have an international legal obligation,” said Ian McLachlan, the defense minister. “We have a moral obligation to clearly go and save people, whether in forest fires, hurricanes or at sea.”
Little has been said, however, about the Australian government’s request to restrict the routes of yacht races – in the hope of keeping sailors in places where they may need less rescue.
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Associated Press writer David Sharp in Portland, Maine contributed to this story.
