A search and rescue for survivors has now turned to a search for the anonymous caller who made a distress call saying that three people have died in a yacht explosion and that nine were injured.
The eerily calm mayday radio call prompted more than 200 first responders from New York and New Jersey to race to the shoreline near Sandy Hook yesterday. Two U.S. Coast Guard ships, NYPD helicopters and police searched 638 square nautical miles for hours after receiving a distress call yesterday at 4:20 p.m., by a male caller who reported an explosion onboard the yacht “The Blind Date.”
But rescuers searched to no avail. Said one coast guard, “we’re scratching our heads, nobody’s confirmed it was a hoax, yet nothing’s been found, no debris, no injuries, no victims, no nothing.”
The search was called off at 10 p.m. last night. What began as a rescue mission quickly turned into a criminal investigation. The Coast Guard is offering a $3,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of the person responsible. Making a false distress call is a felony, carrying a of five to ten years in prison, a $250,000 fine and reimbursement to the Coast Guard for the cost of their search. But despite the penalty, hoax calls are not unusual. Last year, the Coast Guard and other agencies responded to 60 suspected false distress calls in the northern New Jersey, New York City and Hudson River region.
Michele Grillo, a professor at Monmouth University’s Department of Criminal Justice, says the Coast Gurad and law enforcement reacted appropriately. “Part of what their job is to do is to respond to any type of distress call,” said Grillo. “So when you hear that a ship is sinking and there’s 21 people potentially involved, you have to respond, you have to take it as truth whether you’re a coast guard or law enforcement, you don’t have time to investigate, you have to react.”
And that reaction is expected to cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for any and all resources used.
“So every agency that’s involved,” said Grillo, “they have to pay the time for that manpower.” And that includes overtime and other expenditures such as the cost of fuel for rescue boats, all of which is paid for by taxpayer money.
A hoax call can have other harmful consequences. Grillo says a diversion of resources can jeopardize responses to real emergencies
“What’s going to happen is … that response time could be so much longer. If there was a criminal event, you might have now more victims. And if criminals often know that resources are shifted to a particular area … it opens up doors for other criminal activity.”
Coast guard officials say they are currently reaching out to owners of other vessels named Blind Date and they are investigating the radio call which they were able to trace back to land.
Reporting from Sandy Hook, Lauren Wanko has the full story.
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