MAMMOTH LAKES, Calif. — Authorities say search teams looking in southern California for any sign of adventurer Steve Fossett have spotted what appears to be wreckage from the air.
Madera County sheriff’s spokeswoman Erica Stuart would not reveal the exact location of the reported aerial sighting Wednesday night and declined to provide any more information.
Authorities had said searchers were combing a 10-mile radius around the area where a hiker had found what appeared to be items belonging to Fossett this week.
The hiker says he found three ID cards with Fossett’s name and about $1,000 in cash Monday tangled in a bush just west of the town of Mammoth Lakes. He turned them into police Wednesday.
Federal Aviation Administration officials say they are trying to determine whether the ID cards are authentic. Fossett vanished on a solo flight more than a year ago.
A hiker in a rugged part of eastern California found a pilot’s license and other items that appear to belong to Steve Fossett, the adventurer who vanished on a solo flight in a borrowed plane more than a year ago, authorities said Wednesday.
The information on the pilot’s license — including Fossett’s name, address, date of birth and certificate number — was sent in a photograph to the Federal Aviation Administration, and all matched the agency’s records, spokesman Ian Gregor said.
The hiker, Preston Morrow, said he found an FAA identity card, a pilot’s license, a third ID and $1,005 in cash tangled in a bush off a trail just west of the town of Mammoth Lakes on Monday. He said he turned the items over to police Wednesday after unsuccessful attempts to contact Fossett’s family.
Mammoth Lakes police investigator Crystal Schafer confirmed that the department had the items.
Search teams led by the Madera County Sheriff’s Department have been sent to the scene, and an air-and-ground effort was expected to be underway soon, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Erica Stuart.
Fossett, a part-time Beaver Creek resident whose exploits included circumnavigating the globe in a balloon, disappeared Sept. 3, 2007, after taking off in a single-engine plane borrowed from a Nevada ranch. A judge declared Fossett legally dead in February following a search for the famed aviator that covered 20,000 square miles.
Aviators had flown over Mammoth Lakes in the search for Fossett, but it had not been considered a likely place to find the plane.
Fossett’s widow, Peggy, said in a statement: “I am hopeful that this search will locate the crash site and my husband’s remains. I am grateful to all of those involved in this effort.”
