Adventurer feared dead as search continues

As the US search for Steve Fossett enters its tenth day, experts say they doubt the millionaire adventurer could have survived more than a week in the rugged desert after his plane vanished.

While the resourceful aviator could scratch water, food and shelter from the desolate Nevada landscape, experts said his first order of business would have been alerting rescuers.

“There’s no news of him signalling for help and that’s a problem,” said David McMullen, a leader of the hiking group Desert Survivors, whose members frequently venture into some of the country’s harshest terrain.

“He’s either so injured he can’t signal or he’s perished.”

Fossett’s plane was equipped with an emergency beacon, and he was wearing a high-tech watch capable of generating a similar signal. Searchers have received no signal from either device, and have not spotted a lower-tech distress signal such as a fire or a large X made of rocks or sticks.

Ground crews tried to track the source of a faint signal from an emergency beacon yesterday, but authorities did not believe it had anything to do with Fossett’s plane.

“It’s not his. It is a canned voice,” Lyon County police spokesman Joe Sanford said.