False-alarm search costs Coast Guard nearly $50,000

SOUTHWEST HARBOR – An exhaustive search-and-rescue effort that ended Sunday when police found a suspected drowning victim home in bed cost federal taxpayers nearly $50,000, the U.S. Coast Guard said Tuesday.

The false alarm triggered a five-hour search that included 10 Coast Guard officers on two rescue boats, a Coast Guard helicopter and crew from Cape Cod, two boats and three officers from the Maine Marine Patrol, the Rockport Police Department and volunteer firefighters who combed the shoreline of Clam Cove in Rockport looking for the man they thought was the victim, according to Coast Guard spokesman Gabe Somma.

“It’s a lot of money to spend just because someone was irresponsible, but we have to treat every distress call as distress,” Somma said. “Until we’re confident he is not out there [in the water], we are going to keep searching.”

While the Coast Guard might be criticized for the cost, the public would have condemned the unit had it suspended the search and found the man dead the next morning, he said.

The bizarre incident began when the Coast Guard received a distress call at 9:40 p.m. Saturday from the skipper of the schooner Timberwind, who had come upon a couple in a skiff and kayak in Clam Cove, an inlet of the Atlantic Ocean. The skipper had tried to help the man, Edward Rochester, 43, of Rockport, get out of the water.

Rochester apparently had jumped from his kayak during a fight with his girlfriend, Amy Gray, 34, of Rockport, who was in a small skiff nearby, Somma said.

Both the man and woman had been drinking, and the man was “extremely intoxicated,” Somma said. The skipper had offered to help Rochester out of the water, “but he was disgruntled and belligerent and refused help,” Somma said.

The woman asked the skipper to call the Coast Guard and later told authorities she “left him out in the water” without a life jacket or any other help.

When the skipper called the Coast Guard and related what had happened, the Coast Guard asked him to return to the area and at least throw the man a life jacket until the Coast Guard could get there, Somma said. But when the skipper returned to the scene, the man had disappeared.

“The last account we had of him was that he was extremely intoxicated and in the water,” Somma said.

After talking to the girlfriend and confirming that she had left him to fend for himself in the Atlantic, the Coast Guard activated its search-and-rescue system, assuming that Rochester was in distress or perhaps had drowned.

Two Coast Guard boats were dispatched to the area where Rochester was last seen, while the Rockport police and some volunteer firefighters began a search of the shoreline.

The Maine Marine Patrol, stationed in Lamoine, also dispatched two boats and three officers.

The Coast Guard called for a helicopter from the Coast Guard station in Cape Cod, Somma said. The helicopter crew searched in vain for four hours before suspending the search about 2:30 a.m. Sunday. The Coast Guard had intended to resume the search at daybreak, Somma said.

Somma said hospitals also were notified regarding the possibility of the arrival of a drowning victim and the landing of a helicopter if necessary.

Rockport police had gone to the couple’s home on Brewster Point Drive twice during the night with Rochester’s sister looking for him. The second time, moments after the Coast Guard had called off the search, Gray walked out of the house when she saw the cruiser lights.

“She said they had been sleeping,” Rockport Patrolman Matthew Elwell said Tuesday.

Gray told Patrolman Michael Jarrett that she had been awakened by the helicopter “and she wanted to know what was going on,” according to Elwell.

Somma was trying to reach Rochester on Tuesday to talk about the case and the extensive and costly search that ensued unnecessarily.

Efforts on Tuesday to reach Rochester and Gray for comment were unsuccessful.

The Coast Guard’s Group Southwest Harbor, which covers the Maine coast from Rockland to Jonesport, has responded to 15 false alarms and 30 uncorroborated mayday calls this summer.

Unlike some public agencies, the Coast Guard does not charge people for rescues that turn out to be hoaxes or false alarms, Somma said.

Somma said the helicopter search cost $42,264 and the Coast Guard boat patrols cost $6,610. He did not have personnel costs for the backup crew that was called in to cover the Rockland station while the first crew searched the water and shoreline.

The public “will see [the rescue effort] as a waste of money, but what do we do? We thought someone’s life was in jeopardy,” the spokesman said.

The Maine Marine Patrol also assigned two boats and three officers to help with the search.

“It was a big fiasco,” said Lt. Alan Talbot, division commander for the MMP. “It was a big waste of time and it took us away from something that could have been important.”

Talbot estimated the cost of the MMP effort at $1,000.