HAWTHORNE, Nev. — Halfway through the latest search for aviator-adventurer Steve Fossett, missing since Sept. 3, 2007, friends and admirers leading a 28-member team said Tuesday that they’re hopeful despite finding little more than bullet-riddled metal scrap so far.
The searchers, who started their hunt for Fossett on Aug. 23 and plan to end it Sept. 10, also said they’ll have a moment of silence today, a year since Fossett’s small plane vanished while flying in rugged mountains just west of here.
“We’re finding your typical broken glass, bottles, cans, car parts, fenders, coffee cans, anything they can put out there and aim at and shoot up,” said Robert Hyman. He and fellow explorers Lew Toulmin and Bob Atwater are heading the search effort.
Toulmin and Hyman said a scrap of blue cloth was found, although it seemed too thin to have been from the fabric-covered aluminum frame of the single-engine plane that Fossett, 63, borrowed from friend and hotel magnate Barron Hilton for a brief pleasure flight.
“We’re pushing harder, leaving people in the field longer. We’ve got the lay of the land now,” Hyman added in discussing the search in canyons of Nevada’s Wassuk Range.
“We hope that Wednesday’s the day,” Toulmin said. “That would be nice.”
