Tuesday's search and rescue operation to find a suspected downed aircraft off the North Otago coast might have been prompted by Oamaru residents noticing flares being fired into the air just hours after being stolen from a fishing boat.
Police in Oamaru yesterday said the search, thought to have cost between $10,000 and $20,000, was being treated as a false alarm rather than a hoax, but confirmed they were investigating an earlier reported theft of four to six flares from a vessel docked at Oamaru Harbour.
Constable Niall Gough said the alleged theft had happened on Tuesday or Wednesday and it appeared that somebody had ''taken them out for a bit of a jolly''.
Rescue helicopters from Dunedin and Oamaru, along with boats from Oamaru and Moeraki spent an hour and a-half scouring the water after members of the public made about five reports of distress flares being fired on Tuesday.
The operation ended when nothing was found, but Sergeant Craig Sew Hoy said if somebody was identified in relation to the alleged theft of flares and the theft could be linked to Tuesday's incident, police would ''certainly'' look at pressing charges.
There had been no hoax calls, but one witness who had seen a flare reported they thought a plane might have crashed.
The witness had been located and had confirmed they had not seen an aircraft in distress. That witness was praised by police for informing them.
''We just want to get it out to the community that if they do see a flare or anything like that then please continue to ring us. We would rather find out it was a malicious call or an innocent mistake by somebody than find it was actually someone calling for help.
''The biggest thing is that the more false alarms like that, the less the public respond to it in phoning us. They become blase about it and that's our biggest concern, and obviously there is a substantial cost to the taxpayer with these sort of things, because they have to be treated seriously.''
He was unable to say exactly how much Tuesday's search had cost, but it would be ''in the thousands of dollars''. Maritime New Zealand said helicopter costs could vary between $1500 and $5000 per hour, but the Otago Regional Rescue Helicopter chief pilot Graeme Gale said the monetary cost of the operation was ''irrelevant''.
The significant issue was false callouts depleted resources ''around the region'' used to help people who were in critical need, he said.
Mr Gale took part in Tuesday's operation and said the helicopter was in the air within four minutes of receiving the emergency call and was on the scene in about 22 minutes.
A hoax mayday call made in March 2010, claiming a boat was on fire near the Waitaki River mouth, cost police more than $24,000, after two helicopters and a Coastguard vessel conducted a search over three and a-half hours.
The man thought to be responsible for the hoax was also believed to have been behind another false call made the previous week, but doubts about the veracity of the call meant a search and rescue operation was not launched on that occasion.
