Bringing Columbia Home

by Michael D. Leinbach

  A glance at the hundreds of pushpins already marking debris sightings on the wall-mounted map of Texas confused me. If Benzon’s estimate was right, how could we be receiving so many reports of debris along a path more than 250 miles long? This didn’t look like the kind of crash scene we were expecting.

  Once the meeting adjourned, Whittle, the other managers, and I discussed what we could do to gather intelligence about materials found in the debris field. We decided to send out several members of the RRT to investigate at various locations—Dallas, Lufkin, Sabine County, NASA’s weather balloon research facility at Palestine, and Louisiana.

  Meanwhile, back at Kennedy Space Center, the Mishap Response Team was in action. Led by Denny Gagen, this team provided the logistics support for whatever we needed in the debris recovery effort. One of their first tasks was to send over the next wave of personnel from Kennedy to supplement our recovery forces. We needed them immediately.

  That morning, our security director Mark Borsi worked with the air force to set up the temporary morgue in a hangar bay. The team immediately went to work outfitting it in a manner appropriate for the solemnity of its intended purpose. They procured American and Israeli flags, as well as refrigerated storage facilities. Borsi was deeply grateful for the air force’s commitment to provide whatever NASA needed for our fallen astronauts.

  —

  In the piney woods of East Texas one hundred miles due south of Barksdale, Hemphill’s population had nearly doubled overnight, as news media, officials, and volunteer searchers made their way to the town. News of the sightings of crew remains had spread through the area. People showed up at the Hemphill fire station, offering to help search for Columbia’s crew.

  Dwight Riley was among those eager to be of assistance. A resident of Sabine County for all of his sixty-five years, he knew the area as well as anyone. State troopers at the fire station directed him to the VFW hall, which had been pressed into service as the staging area for volunteers.

  At the hall, Riley observed “hordes of people” in sneakers, lightweight pants, and other clothing that he knew would not be any match for the conditions in the field. He located the woman who was assembling search teams and volunteered his services. “I might be old,” he told her, “but I’m up to the challenge.”

  As Belinda Gay, head of the VFW Women’s Auxiliary, served breakfast to some of the volunteers, she listened to the stories about the crew remains recoveries the day before, and learned that the command center urgently needed more volunteers. She told her husband Roger that she felt compelled to join them. He encouraged her to do what she felt she needed to do. Belinda walked with the search teams for the next three days, and Roger stayed behind to run the food service operation.

  Sixty miles to the west, leaders from myriad state and federal agencies had poured into the Lufkin Civic Center overnight and into the morning. The presence of so many type-A personalities and the significance of the event electrified the atmosphere in the building. Everyone wanted to be useful. Many felt compelled to be in charge of something.

  Fortunately, experienced leaders knew chaos was part of the normal process in the hours following a catastrophe. It would take forty-eight to seventy-two hours to gather the appropriate situational awareness, sort out priorities, and begin taking control of the situation. Until then, things would be messy—and probably get messier.

  The nonstop activity since the accident caused people’s perception of time to become fluid and deceptive. Mark Stanford from the Texas Forest Service found that working in the windowless building was like being in a casino, without visual cues to indicate how much time had passed. At one point, Stanford told someone that he had been on duty for seventy-two hours straight. He was surprised to learn that it was still less than twenty-four hours after the accident.

  NASA and FEMA debated initially over who was in charge of the recovery operation. Two men from FEMA asserted to NASA’s Dave King that they were in charge, since President Bush’s disaster declaration designated FEMA to handle the aftermath of the accident. King felt NASA had given him the responsibility. King called NASA headquarters. Shortly afterward, the White House Situation Room called King to ask what was going on. A few minutes later, King was told, “You’re in charge of the search and recovery. FEMA’s there to support you.”

  Almost immediately afterward, one of the FEMA men came to King and asked, “What can we do to help?” No egos were involved—it was just that the roles needed to be clarified and confirmed. Multiple leaders simply could not all have the final decision-making authority.

  It took several days to iron out the specifics, but everyone ultimately agreed that FEMA was the lead agency to respond to the declared national disaster. FEMA funded the operation and coordinated all the federal, state, and local support. NASA was the lead agency for information and intelligence. NASA was also in charge of the technical aspects of the search-and-recovery operations and the accident investigation. FEMA tasked the US Environmental Protection Agency to work with the other agencies to ensure public safety by collecting, decontaminating, and transporting the debris. The FBI was the lead agency for recovering human remains. Finally, the Texas Forest Service was the lead state agency for Texas, providing planning and logistics support to the overall operation, and they were the primary interface with the local incident command teams.1 Other federal, state, and local agencies would lend support as required in their areas of expertise.

  Lufkin served as FEMA’s operational disaster field office for all operations, including staging assets and deploying search teams to the field. Barksdale was NASA’s investigative center and debris processing facility.2

  Only twenty-four hours after the accident, dozens of agencies and hundreds of people were starting to make sense out of an unprecedented disaster that spanned huge swaths of several states. And the scope of the problem was still unknown.

  —

  By mid-morning, eighty searchers were on hand at Hemphill’s VFW hall, including volunteers from the local community, Department of Public Safety troopers, and personnel from the nearby US Forest Service Sabine, Angelina, and Davy Crockett Ranger Districts, as well as representatives from the Sabine River Authority.3 Search coordinator Greg Cohrs divided the people into four teams of twenty. He selected crew leads based on their leadership, “woods-worthiness,” and navigational skills. He assigned the teams to grid-search two areas near where the first significant crew remains had been found. The crews would search along either side of the centerline Cohrs had drawn the previous evening, where it appeared most likely they would find additional remains. Groups One and Two walked northwest along both sides of the centerline from Beckcom Road. Groups Three and Four worked their way northwest from the location of the crew remains found on Farm Road 2024 near Housen Bayou.4

  Grid searching is a basic skill for forestry workers—a methodical, disciplined way to search an area for still-smoldering pockets of embers that might rekindle into flame. Law enforcement also uses the technique to search crime scenes for evidence or to cover a large area when looking for a missing person.

  The process involved walking in a line with searchers spaced out abreast at about an arm’s length from one another. In practice, separation varied from five to twenty feet depending on the thickness of the local vegetation. As the line moved slowly forward, searchers would scan the ground and trees for anything of interest, and immediately flag and record its GPS position. If crew remains were found, law enforcement officers would call in the astronaut recovery team. Any shuttle debris would be left in place, because of potential hazardous chemical contamination, unless the item appeared to be an avionics box or something personal from the crew. The search line would continue to follow its prescribed path until it reached a road crossing, where the group’s end-line exit points were flagged. The command center kept track of the searched areas on a topographic map.

  Marsha Cooper of the US Forest Service was on one of the teams searching between Beckcom Road and
Springhill Road, a few yards from where the first crew member was found the previous day. Cooper was wearing her new $300 fire boots.

  Her team stepped off Beckcom Road, over some brush, and into the field. She immediately halted in her tracks. “There’s something here,” she called out. The line boss asked her to repeat what she’d said. “There’s something here,” she said, her voice breaking.

  She did not want the nearby news media crews to hear that she was standing amid human remains.

  Dense briar thickets, fences, streams, and other obstacles tormented the searchers as they made their way through the forests. The search lines had to go over or through those impediments—not around them—to ensure that nothing on the ground was missed. It was brutal work. Brambles and thorns shredded clothing and drew blood.

  Volunteer Dwight Riley saw some people give up after a hundred yards, when their clothes proved woefully inadequate. One FBI agent, attired in a business suit and dress shoes, stepped in deep mud. He had to be extricated by his teammates, who then had to retrieve his shoes from the muck. DPS troopers’ highway patrol uniforms afforded no protection from the environment.

  Belinda Gay, who had been serving breakfast to the searchers, found walking the search line a strangely comforting—and somber—experience. There was little talking other than the occasional admonition from the leader to stay in line. No one knew what they were going to find, although they were keenly aware of the possibilities.

  Debris of all sizes littered the area. Items from the crew compartment sobered the searchers. Pieces of mission patches—some scorched, others nearly pristine—lay in the fields. Golf balls and other items flown by the crew as presents for friends and family also turned up. Pieces of the crew’s flight suits—boots, glove lock rings, and helmets—gave people pause.

  In addition to the organized searches, local residents were requested to walk their property to look for anything that might have come from the shuttle. Hivie McCowan, an elderly widow, was deathly afraid to look around, because she feared she might encounter human remains. But she mustered the courage to walk through her pasture, and she found a large metal beam that clearly did not belong there.

  The US Forest Service secured permission to resume helicopter flights over the area. Don Eddings of the Sabine Ranger District flew as a spotter in a contracted Bell 205 helicopter. His goal was to locate and record the position of possible crew remains and debris in inaccessible locations. As his helicopter flew between Bronson and Spring Hill Cemetery, something on the ground reflected the morning sun. He asked the pilot to land nearby, and Eddings found a large plastic envelope fastened with Velcro. Curious, he opened the envelope. It contained what appeared to be Columbia’s flight plan. He marked the location and called it in for pickup.

  In Lufkin, astronaut Jim Wetherbee contemplated his responsibility for recovering Columbia’s crew. His assignment was clear: Find the remains of the crew. Do whatever it takes. There are no rules.

  The potential scale of the search effort required seemed almost impossible to comprehend. Analysis of the tracking data during Columbia’s descent and breakup showed that debris rained down over a three-hundred-mile-long, fifty-mile-wide path stretching from Dallas to Fort Polk, Louisiana.

  With locally led searches already underway in East Texas, Wetherbee established a military-style command and control system, led by astronauts, to solidify the search operations. John Grunsfeld was “ground boss” in Lufkin, charged with planning the ground searches each day, coordinating the search teams, and using feedback from the field to refine the overall strategy for subsequent days. He was also responsible for narrowing the search field based on analyses of recovered material.

  Scott Horowitz, as the “air boss,” managed all airborne searches for the crew.5 Steve Bowen and Jim Reilly oversaw the water search operations in the lakes along the debris path.6 Marsha Ivins coordinated the administrative and logistical support operations for the astronaut office team in Lufkin.7

  Their leadership operations were completely separate from the activities associated with retrieving Columbia’s debris. Wetherbee and his team did not discuss their activities with the teams working on the debris recovery effort. Information did flow in the other direction, though, as locations of retrieved items from the crew module might help target people who were searching for the crew.

  Map of East Texas showing the initial search area (ellipse) based on the first reported debris sightings. During the course of the following week, NASA gradually refined the search area for Columbia’s crew to a narrow corridor between San Augustine and the Toledo Bend Reservoir.

  As the day progressed, it became clear that search teams in Sabine County needed more GPS equipment. Over the next several days, the command center sent people to every Walmart, sports store, and outdoor outfitter within a 150-mile radius to purchase all the available handheld GPS devices. The team also bought $35,000 worth of equipment and supplies from Hemphill’s only office supply store.8 Other command center staff rustled up first aid supplies from the local pharmacies and the Walmart in Jasper.

  Leaders of NASA’s command teams from Lufkin arrived at the Hemphill command center. They asked to see law enforcement officer Doug Hamilton from the US Forest Service, who had been photographing debris with his digital camera over the past two days. After reviewing his images with them in private, he drove them around to the locations of various items they wanted to examine firsthand.

  Astronaut John Grunsfeld returned to the Hemphill command center to help plan searches for the crew. He mentioned to Olen Bean of the Texas Forest Service that his laptop lacked mapping software, so Bean offered to let him use a copy of a digital street atlas. Grunsfeld tried several times without success to get the program to load on his computer. Finally, Bean pointed out that Grunsfeld was hitting the “X” (close box) instead of “Yes” to complete the installation. Grunsfeld, a man with a PhD in physics—someone who had repaired and upgraded the Hubble Space Telescope on two separate missions—smacked his head and said, “Man! I’m so stupid!” It lightened the mood. But it also bore witness to the enormous pressure he was feeling.

  Other astronauts arrived at the command center to help investigate sightings of possible human remains. Among them was Scott Kelly, Mark’s identical twin brother.

  Shortly after noon, the command center in Hemphill received a call that a crew member’s body had been found deep in the woods near the Yellowpine Fire Tower, in an area known locally as Seven Canyons. The landowners searched their property that morning using all-terrain vehicles and found the remains near the boundary of Sabine National Forest.9 Mark Kelly, Terry Lane, and two Texas game wardens went to the property to investigate. The landowners led them through the dense forest. It took nearly half an hour to reach the site using the ATVs. Kelly and his team saw the astronaut’s body lying on a small mound in a clearing almost one mile from the closest roadway. The beauty of the surroundings belied the tragic nature of the situation. Kelly and Lane sat with the fallen astronaut for almost ninety minutes as they awaited the arrival of the rest of the recovery team.

  Brother Fred Raney delivered a prayer, and the FBI documented the scene. While the recovery was in process, a call came in that another body had been located about five miles away, on the other side of Hemphill. This sighting was near Housen Hollow Lane, west of Farm Road 2024. After carefully bringing the crew member’s remains out from the deep woods at Yellowpine, the recovery team headed off toward the Housen Bayou site.

  Television satellite trucks massed along the street across from the Hemphill Volunteer Fire Department’s fire hall. The command center was cordoned off, but incident commanders had difficulty entering and leaving the building undisturbed. Co-incident commanders Sheriff Maddox and Billy Ted Smith in particular were being closely watched. They had to resort to stealthier tactics—changing shirts or jackets, leaving through the back entrance of the fire hall, or using decoy vehicles—just to get their work done.

  To
be fair, the national newspapers and television outlets showed respect by not sensationalizing information that might be upsetting to the families or to NASA. Still, they were eager to tell the world—and the world wanted to know—what was going on in this high-profile search-and-recovery operation. They pushed the boundaries until they were told to back off. Reporters attempted to follow searchers out into the field. Police sometimes had to hold them back to keep them from interfering.

  Much to the relief of the incident commanders, the local populace was circumspect about sightings of human remains on their property—calling the command center, not the press. To this day, the people of Sabine County will not discuss with outsiders what they saw of the remains of Columbia’s crew.

  However, the media somehow got wind that a third crew member had been found in Housen Bayou. Texas DPS officers held most of the reporters back about a quarter mile from the entrance to the woods, but one reporter had arrived on the scene before the roadblock was established. He told Sheriff Maddox, waiting by the ambulance dispatched to recover the remains, that he had a constitutional right to follow the recovery team back into the woods. After arguing for several minutes, Maddox presented the man the option of leaving the scene voluntarily or being taken out in the back of a police car.

  While Maddox and the reporter argued, the landowners took Kelly, Lane, and Brother Fred to the astronaut’s location. The mud and briar thickets made the swampy bayou area difficult to navigate. Kelly went forward to be near his fallen colleague. After pausing in reflection for a moment, he motioned for Raney to join him. Raney once again read a few passages from Scripture and said a prayer. It was an arduous and sorrowful process to carry the astronaut’s remains back out of the woods to the waiting ambulance.