With Web's Help, The World Joins Search for Fossett

MINDEN, Nev., Sept. 13 -- The emptiness that adventure pilot Steve Fossett disappeared into at 10:30 a.m. on Labor Day appears almost endless from the air, a rugged moonscape of mountain ridges that deepen from brown to purple before dissolving into the horizon itself. There are mountains and more mountains and, between them, canyons that hide whatever may have fallen in.

"The perspective from outside is Nevada is flat, hot, with cactus and sagebrush," said Trooper Chuck Allen, a member of the highway patrol in what, in fact, is the most mountainous state in the union. And one so empty that official highway maps warn motorists to stock up on water and fuel before venturing into the interior.

"It's been an area where people have been written off for a terribly long time," said University of Nevada geography professor Paul F. Starrs.

But no one appears to be writing off Fossett -- not his family and friends, not the state of Nevada, not a worldwide network of Internet kibitzers.

In the 11 days since the aviator flew a stunt plane into the high, blue sky above the ranch of billionaire Barron Hilton, the state has spent an estimated $600,000 looking for him, officials said.

The sum does not include the 15 small planes the Civil Air Patrol grounded Thursday because of high winds, but that otherwise flies in grid patterns over a 17,000-square-mile search area -- nor another dozen private aircraft searching from the mile-long airstrip at Hilton's Flying M Ranch, nor planes and helicopters provided by neighboring states and the U.S. Forest Service.

The Internet has made the search both intensely local and truly global. Search organizers urge the public to scan satellite images of the terrain available on Google Earth. If they see something that might be the plane, they flag it to searchers, who compare the images Google purchased last week with images from two years earlier.

"Technically, it's completely simple," said volunteer Tim Ball, printing out a map in a trailer beside the fatigue-green tent that serves as search headquarters. Inside, a volunteer in a green shirt sat by a phone that has rung with calls from Poland, Russia and Japan. Beside him, two volunteers in orange shorts were hunched over laptops.

"You have the benefit of tens of thousands of eyes," Ball said. "It just needs some screening. But it's totally worth it."

A Nevada Air National Guard C-130 Hercules ascends daily to conduct the search, along with helicopters including two AH-60 Black Hawks, two OH-58 Kiowas and a Chinook. The choppers chase tips from people who think they may have spotted Fossett's plane on satellite images that Google spent an estimated $100,000 updating last week to assist the search.

"It's almost like an Amber alert," said Allen, the state trooper, "in the sense that you're trying to get as many eyes as possible out there looking for one individual."

Some tipsters are detecting very small things. Several have flagged x-shaped survey markers that from overhead may resemble a plane but, in fact, measure two feet across.