Posted on 02/04/2003 5:25:55 AM PST by MeekOneGOP
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. |
Finding such evidence would be "like looking for a needle in a haystack," Mr. Dittemore said. And this haystack blew apart at more than 12,000 mph, 200,000 feet above the Texas landscape.
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. |
NASA's independent investigative team, led by retired Adm. Harold Gehman Jr., has set up headquarters at the base, marking debris sites on a large map with color codes for particle sizes.
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. |
The search mobilization has been massive in some places.
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
http://www.wfaa.com/watchvideo/index.jsp?SID=3683978
Video shows shuttle may have shed debris over Arizona -
check out this video taken by amateurs
Video link: Shuttle over D/FW, Texas
Very close-up, slo-mo of the Columbia launch debris
The images over CA may or may not be anomalous.
IMHO, the event over AZ looks like the ejection (breakaway) of a fairly large mass, which then burns up -- and produces a plasma sphere much larger than the (still mostly intact) shuttle is generating.
Re the tiles: isn't each one numbered?
I imagine we'll be getting reports for the next 20+ years, as hunters and others outdoors discovery pieces...
Yes, the tiles are identifiable/serially numbered in some fashion is my understanding.
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