Global Courant
When millionaire Steve Fossett’s plane went missing over the Nevada range in 2007, the reckless adventurer had already been the subject of two previous emergency rescue operations thousands of miles apart.
And that led to a tantalizing question: who would foot the bill after a sweeping search for the wealthy risk-taker ended?
In recent days, the mass hunt for a submarine lost during a North Atlantic descent to explore the wreckage of the Titanic has once again drawn attention to that conundrum. And with rescuers and the public fixated first on rescuing and then mourning those on board, this once again made for awkward conversations.
“Five people just lost their lives and to talk about insurance, all the rescue efforts and the costs can seem pretty heartless — but the point is, there are costs in the end,” said Arun Upneja, dean of Boston University’s School of Hospitality Administration and a tourism researcher.
“There are a lot of people who will say, ‘Why should society spend money on the rescue if (these people) are rich enough to … participate in these high-risk activities?'”
That question is getting more and more attention as very wealthy travelers in search of unique adventures spend great peaks, sail across oceans and rocket into space.
The U.S. Coast Guard declined Friday to provide a cost estimate for its efforts to locate the Titan, which the submarine investigators say imploded not far from the world’s most famous shipwreck. Among the five people lost were a billionaire British businessman and a father and son from one of Pakistan’s most prominent families. The operator charged passengers $250,000 each to participate in the trip.
“We cannot assign a monetary value to search and rescue cases as the Coast Guard does not associate costs with saving a life,” the agency said.
While Coast Guard costs for the mission are likely to run into the millions of dollars, federal law generally prohibits collecting fees for search or rescue services, said Stephen Koerting, a U.S. attorney in Maine who specializes in maritime law.
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But that doesn’t resolve the larger question of whether wealthy travelers or corporations should bear responsibility to the public and governments for exposing themselves to such risks.
“This is one of the hardest questions to answer,” said Pete Sepp, president of the National Taxpayers Union, which has covered government-funded bailouts dating back to British billionaire Richard Branson’s hot-air balloon exploits in the nineties. .
“This should never be just about government spending, or maybe not even primarily about government spending, but you can’t help but think about how rescue workers’ limited resources can be used,” Sepp said.
The demand for those resources came into the limelight in 1998 when Fossett’s attempt to circle the world in a hot air balloon ended with a plunge into the ocean 500 miles off Australia. The Royal Australian Air Force sent a Hercules C-130 transport plane to find him. A French military aircraft dropped a 15-man life raft to Fossett before being picked up by a passing yacht.
Critics suggested that Fossett should foot the bill. He rejected the idea.
Late that same year, the U.S. Coast Guard spent more than $130,000 to rescue Fossett and Branson after their hot air balloon fell into the ocean near Hawaii. Branson said he would pay if the Coast Guard asked, but the agency didn’t ask.
Nine years later, after Fossett’s plane disappeared over Nevada during what should have been a short flight, the state’s National Guard launched a months-long search that uncovered the wreckage of dozens of other decades-old crashes without actually identifying the millionaire. find.
The state said the mission had cost taxpayers $685,998, $200,000 of which was covered by a private contribution. But when Governor Jim Gibbons’ administration announced it would pay back the remainder, Fossett’s widow refused, noting that she had spent $1 million on her own private investigation.
“We believe that the search by the State of Nevada is an expense of the government in conducting government actions,” an attorney wrote on behalf of the Fossett estate.
Risky adventurism is not unique to wealthy people.
The pandemic spawned a surge in visits to places like national parks, adding to the popularity of climbing, hiking and other outdoor activities. Meanwhile, the proliferation of cell phones and service has made many feel that if something goes wrong, help is at their fingertips.
Some places have laws commonly referred to as “dumb motorist laws,” in which drivers are forced to pay the emergency bill when they ignore barricades on flooded roads. Arizona has such a law and Volusia County in Florida, home of Daytona, passed similar legislation this week. The idea of a similar “stupid walker law” is also a regular topic of discussion in Arizona, with so many unprepared people needing rescue in stifling triple-digit heat.
Most search officials and volunteers are against asking for help, said Butch Farabee, a former forest ranger who participated in hundreds of rescues in the Grand Canyon and other national parks and has written several books on the subject.
Searchers are concerned that if they were to attack to save people, “they won’t call for help as quickly as they should and by the time they do it will be too late,” Farabee said.
The trade-off is that some take that vital help for granted. Farabee recounts a phone call in the 1980s from a lawyer who underestimated the effort required to hike out of the Grand Canyon. The man requested a helicopter rescue and said he had an important meeting the next day. The ranger declined that request.
But that’s not an option when the lives of adventurers, some of them quite wealthy, are in extreme danger.
On Mount Everest, it can cost tens of thousands of dollars in permit and shipping costs to climb. A handful of people die or go missing as they hike the mountain each year – prompting emergency aid from local officials.
While the government of Nepal requires climbers to have rescue insurance, the scope of rescue efforts can vary widely, with Upneja estimating that some can cost “several tens of thousands of dollars”.
Nepal’s foreign ministry did not respond to a message asking for comment.
On the high seas, wealthy sailors seeking speed and distance records also repeatedly need rescue when their voyages went astray.
When Tony Bullimore’s yacht, a British millionaire on a round-the-world voyage, capsized 2,400 miles off the coast of Australia in 1997, it seemed that he was done for. As he clung to the inside of the hull, he ran out of fresh water and almost out of air.
When a rescue ship arrived, he desperately swam to the surface.
“I started looking back on my life and thinking, ‘Well, I’ve had a good life, I’ve done most of the things I’d like to do,'” Bullimore said afterwards. describe it, it would be a miracle, an absolute miracle.’
Australian officials, whose troops rescued a French sailor the same week, were more moderate in their assessment.
“We have an international legal obligation,” Defense Secretary Ian McLachlan said. “We clearly have a moral obligation to start rescuing people, whether from wildfires, cyclones or at sea.”
There was less talk, however, about the Australian government’s request to restrict yacht racing routes – in the hope of keeping sailors to areas where they might need less rescue.
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Associated Press writer David Sharp in Portland, Maine contributed to this story.
