Colorado balloon boy’s family could get billed for rescue effort

The National Post ^ | October 16, 2009 | Karen Hawthorne

[GoldStandard]

A sheriff’s office that helped chase down a saucer-shaped balloon that officials feared was carrying a six-year-old boy over Colorado is now considering billing the child’s family hundreds of thousands of dollars to pay for a rescue effort that turned out to be needless, Canwest News Service reports:

A spokeswoman for the Weld County Sheriff’s Office said all of the county’s on-duty resources were expended in the balloon chase Thursday, which ended when the sliver, UFO-likecontraption floated to the ground without a child aboard. It was later discovered the child was hiding in the attic of his family’s garage.

Deputy Margie Martinez said officers were called in early to help in the rescue effort, forcing the county to put all other service calls on hold.

“We might send them a bill,” said Martinez. “We had all these resources taken away from doing the workload that would normally be done and redirected toward this one incident.”

She told Canwest News Servicez the bill could range into the “hundreds of thousands” of dollars.

[Oztrich Boy]

Did the family ask for a rescue?

If they didn't they should be charged with prank calling 911.

[Finny]

Frankly, if pitchforks are involved, it should be toward the morons in law enforcement who actually fell for the idea that the balloon had the capacity to carry much more than a couple of hamsters.

It's why the Hindenberg was so big.

Both the national news media and law enforcement revealed themselves as fools of breathtaking caliber.

This guy Heene is a national treasure.

[Finny]

AMEN! The beauty of capitalism!

[ErnstStavroBlofeld]

I hope the father goes to jail. He interfered with air traffic control over DIA.