A jigsaw puzzle of debris
Posted on 02/03/2003 6:10:07 PM PST by MeekOneGOP
A jigsaw puzzle of debris
02/03/2003
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - In East Texas, where debris from the space shuttle Columbia rained down from the sky on Saturday, a number of agencies are struggling to organize an unprecedented search effort -- even as more parts from the ill-fated spacecraft are being identified.
Search teams are also finding body parts in and around the wreckage.
The first human remains were transported to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. "They formally, as in any military funeral, received the caskets," said Lt. Col. Larry Hahn of Barksdale's 2nd Bomb Wing.
"We had a color guard there with both the American and Israeli flags," he added, noting that one of the astronauts was from Israel.
NASA said Monday that teams made up of an Environmental Protection Agency investigator and an officer from theTexas Department of Public Safety will be dispatched from a NASA command post in Lufkin 30 miles away.
Once dispatched into the field, these teams will be directed by local authorities.
WFAA-TV Lt. Tony Jasso of the Nacogdoches constable's office examines a pice of shuttle debris found Monday morning. |
The federal, state and local personnel are all attempting to put together the jigsaw puzzle of shuttle debris scattered over a 33-county, 22,000 square mile area from north of Dallas to the Gulf Coast.
Not all the pieces of that puzzle are immediately obvious.
In front of the Nacogdoches law enforcement center Monday morning -- where news reporters had gathered for official briefings -- a small piece of debris was discovered.
"It's very surprising," said Lt. Tony Jasso, a Nacogdoches constable. "It was just discovered right now when everybody's leaving."
On Sunday night, investigators picked up a large piece of debris found near a local school. This and other shuttle remnants are being marked, mapped and then shipped to either Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana or the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base at Carswell Field in Fort Worth.
NASA investigators will try to reconstruct Columbia as best they can. They say this physical evidence is critical to their analysis.
The debris field covers hundreds of square miles in Texas and Louisiana. NASA officials said initial efforts will concentrate on identifyiing remains of the seven astronauts who perished just minutes before they were scheduled to land at Cape Canaveral.
"We have received approximately six more unconfirmed reports of sites that may contain human remains," said Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss. We're in the process of trying to investigate those sites now; they still remain a top priority."
Sheriff Kerss confirmed that a large section of the shuttle's cabin was located in Nacogdoches County.
Lt. Jasso said there is so much shuttle debris in such a wide area, it may be months or even years before all of it can be found.
Experienced crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board have traveled to Texas to help NASA tackle the daunting search and reconstruction effort. The NTSB team features five investigators with expertise in aircraft structures and aircraft systems.
The NTSB has determined causes for a number of crashes, including several where plane wreckage had to be recovered from under water. NTSB experts also aided in the space shuttle Challenger explosion investigation in 1986. But they have never faced such a massive task, spokesman Keith Holloway said.
"I can't compare it," he said. "We've done some massive searches for aircraft, but I don't know if we've had an area as vast as this."
If a crash occurs on the ground, the debris field often is relatively small. Investigators could walk side-by-side along a runway and usually find most evidence.
In Texas as in other cases, investigators will be looking for the smallest parts, which can hold the biggest clues.
"We look for nuts and bolts. Something that small that people may think would be minor could be crucial," he said, adding that any evidence should not be disturbed once it is found. "It's important to map things out where they fall. It could give us some idea of what happened. Like any crime scene, you don't want to move a thing until it has been documented."
In the rugged East Texas country, manpower to cover enough ground will be crucial, Mr. Holloway said.
"We hope there is an answer," he said. "It's still early. There's a lot of ground work - literally - to cover."
Time is important in gathering evidence, but not the sole consideration.
In past airline crashes, investigators have found evidence weeks and months after the incident. Within months, divers found 95 percent of the wreckage of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, N.Y.
The material still proved valuable, Mr. Holloway said.
"You can see what damage was due to water and weather and what damage was caused by an impact," he said. "You can still rule things out with that evidence."
A total of 543 Texas Army National Guard members have been called into active duty by Gov. Rick Perry to help with the shuttle disaster aftermath, said Lt. Col. John Stanford, public affairs officer for the Texas Army National Guard.
Most of the solders - 369 - have been sent to the Nacogdoches area of East Texas to help with debris recovery and disposal, Col. Stanford said. Many of those are part of civil support teams, which specialize in chemical, biological and nuclear warfare, he said.
They will inspect potentially toxic materials and recommend how they should be handled, he said. Civil support team members themselves do not decontaminate materials, Col. Stanford said.
"There's so much work to be done and so much identification of materials to be done," he said.
In addition to the soldiers sent to East Texas, another 174 have been dispatched to locations that include Austin, Dallas, Huntsville, Lufkin and San Antonio to help with a variety of shuttle-related efforts, Col. Stanford said. A total of 18 helicopters were part of the deployment.
Col. Stanford said he didn't know if more Texas Army National Guard members would be called to active duty.
Watch WFAA-TV (Ch. 8) and TXCN (Cable Ch. 38 in Dallas area) for news updates throughout the day and read more in tomorrow's Dallas Morning News .
Massive hunt turns up nose cone but doesn't omit tiniest fragments
02/04/2003
NACOGDOCHES, Texas - The unparalleled scavenger hunt for remnants of the crumbled Columbia expanded and intensified Monday as the first physical clues of the space shuttle's disintegration over Texas were delivered to federal investigators.
At Barksdale Air Force Base near Shreveport, La., some human remains arrived Monday after an honor guard met two caskets holding other remains Sunday.
"We're being respectful and honorable with the remains that have been, and will be, brought here in the coming days," Lt. Col. Larry Hohn said.
Debris is so scattered that a second center for collection was set up at the former Carswell air base in Fort Worth.
And in Sabine County, the spacecraft's nose cone was found, embedded in the pine forest floor beneath a dense stand of broken trees.
"You can see the foot pedals and the instruments inside," said Hemphill resident Nathan Ener, who made the discovery with a friend. The retired corrections officer said he also found some of the shuttle's windows.
"For the last two days we've walked the woods, and we've been finding stuff," he said.
Near the center of the debris field, searchers found hundreds more wreckage fragments as well as more human remains in Nacogdoches and San Augustine County.
Meanwhile, NASA officials for the first time emphasized their "extreme" interest in finding shuttle debris that may have ripped away from the spacecraft's skin in the final minutes as it soared over the southwestern United States on its ill-fated landing approach Saturday.
"We've all seen the debris map as it stretches out from Fort Worth down through Lufkin and into Louisiana," shuttle program director Ron Dittemore said. "But any tile or structure upstream from Fort Worth, New Mexico, Arizona, if that exists, that is extremely important to us.
"That's going to be a real key in the puzzle."
AP A large portion of Columbia's nose cone was found imbedded in a field near Hemphill, Texas, on Monday. |
Suspicious debris has been reported in more than three dozen Texas counties and more than 10 Louisiana parishes in a remarkably wide swath.
Those sites range from Grayson County on the Oklahoma border to Jefferson County on the Gulf Coast, though federal officials said some reports would prove false. Officials also are checking debris from Eastland County, about 120 miles southwest of Dallas.
"It turns out that the debris field is quite large and still really being determined," said Michael Kostelnik, NASA deputy associate administrator. "Today we find there is more things farther west than we anticipated."
Overwhelmed law enforcement officers, working long shifts, struggled to keep tabs on thousands of pieces of cordoned-off evidence, while thousands of Texas students stayed away from school Monday. Under the direction of the Environmental Protection Agency, workers tried to finish scouring scores of school grounds for potentially hazardous wreckage.
More than 540 Texas Army National Guard members were called to active duty.
"There's so much work to be done and so much identification of materials to be done," said Lt. Col. John Stanford, a spokesman.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency opened the second collection center for debris, this one in a vacant hangar at Fort Worth's Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base.
Last weekend, base personnel collected "charred tile pieces" and other fragments, spokesman Donald Ray said.
Searchers discovered the pieces in Joshua and Venus, south of Fort Worth. The pieces ranged from half-dollar size to a 6-by-6-inch metal strip, Mr. Ray said.
Debris discovered in the Eastland County town of Gorman was sent to the base, and teams were still searching south of Arlington and Fort Worth, he said.
Collection efforts progressed faster at Barksdale, where debris started arriving "in everything from helicopters to rental cars," NASA spokesman Steve Nesbitt said.
"Most of the things are not very large, from the size of a trash can lid to something much smaller," Mr. Nesbitt said.
MICHAEL AINSWORTH / DMN Nathan Ener of Hemphill, who with a friend found the nose cone, speaks with Steve Jones (left) and Roger Looka of the Department of Public Safety about the discovery. |
The ultimate goal is to reconstruct what can be found of the Columbia shuttle. But it remained unclear how much of the wreckage would be found or what value the evidence would retain.
"It's going to be very hard to find a piece that still preserves the initial condition at failure," said Jerry Grey, a policy director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He added that fuel-tank explosions also may have damaged evidence.
"Most of the stuff they find will be of no value, but they may find one or two pieces that give them an indication."
The pieces may come in by the tens of thousands, collected by at least 30 recovery teams made up of federal, state and local officials. Human remains have the highest priority, followed by potentially hazardous material, computer or cabin parts, and control devices.
In Nacogdoches County, which has more than 1,200 sites, searchers found possible human remains Monday in what appears to be a 6-foot section of cabin material.
Authorities also were planning to recover wreckage that a resident had taken home.
In San Augustine County, which was littered by falling debris, scores of residents guarded small and large pieces and waited for authorities to collect them.
Some residents said they were bothered by reports of wreckage being stolen, as well as by collection delays.
"They've got thousands of things to pick up down here," Cherokee County Judge Chris Davis said. "We've been trying to figure out an alternative collection method.
"I think we'll be finding this stuff for hundreds of years."
U.S. Rep. Jim Turner, D-Crockett, said he had been assured by federal authorities that more help is on the way. "I just hope it's not too long," he said.
TOM FOX / DMN Members of the FBI, Nacogdoches County sheriff's officials and the Eastham Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections regroup after a day of combing 500 acres of rough terrain outside Chireno. |
In Lufkin, 500 workers from 30 state and federal agencies work out of a regional command center.
About 350 people are working in Anderson County, with nearly 700 in San Augustine County, officials said.
County Judge Wayne Holt said more than 1,000 objects have been found in one area there.
Dog teams have helped find human remains at 15 to 20 points, he said.
Crash investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board are helping NASA with the search and reconstruction effort.
The agency helped investigate the shuttle Challenger explosion in 1986, but it has never faced a job like this, NTSB spokesman Keith Holloway said.
"I can't compare it," he said. "We've done some massive searches for aircraft, but I don't know if we've had an area as vast as this."
Staff writers Mark Wrolstad, Todd Bensman, David Levinthal, Ian McCann, Tony Hartzel, David Sedeño and Ed Housewright and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
E-mail lhancock@dallasnews.com and dmichaels@dallasnews.com
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