Shuttle disaster disrupts quiet calm of life in the piney woods - community opens up to help out

Associated Press ^ | February 7, 2003 | By LISA FALKENBERG / The Associated Press

[MeekOneGOP]

Shuttle disaster disrupts quiet calm of life in the piney woods

02/07/2003

By LISA FALKENBERG / The Associated Press

SAN AUGUSTINE, Texas — From the front window of a lonely store, Aimee Garrett and her tiny terrier "Sugar" watch the incessant blur of disaster crew trucks, state troopers and military vehicles that roar down the highway connecting Nacogdoches to San Augustine.

"Nobody comes here unless they have to," said 30-year-old Garrett, who works in the frame country store off the highway in the tiny community of Chireno. "It's just another day here."

But it's far from just another day around Chireno and many of the East Texas towns where hundreds of volunteers, National Guardsmen and workers from 64 government agencies have descended to try to find and collect all the debris left when the space shuttle Columbia broke apart over the area Saturday.

In San Augustine, there is no quiet calm like that in Chireno. Here, a sea of government vehicles surround the civic center and flow into a nearby restaurant parking lot marked by handwritten signs that read "customer parking only."

Ronnie Spencer, assistant director of the Brookshire Bros. grocery store, said the store has been scrambling to keep its shelves stocked and fill the orders of the Salvation Army, which feeds the search and recovery crews three meals a day.

"These businesses have been cleaned out," said Salvation Army worker Bobby Henson of San Antonio. "They've never had anybody walk in and buy $300 worth continuously."

Spencer said the store has had to special order items such as sausage patties, eggs and bacon to keep up with the demand. Still, the demand means better sales, which were up $9,000 on Monday compared with the same day last year.

"It's helping the local businesses. There ain't no doubt," Spencer said.

Kirit Patel, manager of the spare-looking San Augustine Inn, said all 55 rooms were occupied Thursday night. Usually, that number is about 10, he said.

"It's tragic what's happened, but if you look at it from a business point, it's pretty good," Patel said Thursday.

With the attention on the shuttle comes added name recognition.

"Not a whole lot of people would recognize Nacogdoches unless they saw it on a map," Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss said. "Now certainly the name itself is known worldwide."

In Melrose, Cheryl Wilson hovers over a map spread across the counter of her country store, patiently pointing out back roads to an out-of-town state trooper.

As soon as the officer leaves, a lost radio operator peeks in and asks how to find the fire department.

The tiny convenience store and cafe that usually serves chicken farmers, cattle haulers and loggers has become an information booth for visiting police, FBI agents, technicians and others searching woods and marshes for remnants of the shuttle.

Nacogdoches County Constable Chuck Copeland was home drinking coffee Saturday morning when he heard the loud rumble overhead. Then his phone started ringing.

"So I get up and get dressed and get going, and I've been going since 8:15 Saturday morning," said the rotund man with the deep drawl, cowboy hat and American flag pin. "This is going to continue for years in this area. ... Long after the search teams pull out, we'll still be finding this stuff."

One of the main thoroughfares in Hemphill is blocked off with orange and white barricades marking Sabine County's search and recovery headquarters. Inside the barricade, reporters scurry between travel trailers and satellite trucks.

Far from shunning the media, locals have offered umbrellas to reporters taking notes in the rain and telephones to those whose cellular phones can't get a connection in the piney woods. At the Dairy Queen in nearby Pineland, reporters and search and rescue workers can get anything they want for free.

Residents also are offering their homes.

Terry Vaughn, a real estate agent in Hemphill, opened her four-bedroom home to four Dallas technicians who operate global-positioning gear used to pinpoint debris.

"If it had been me, I hope someone would have done it for me," Vaughn said. Besides, with her five children grown and out of the house, Vaughn said, she had room.

Lisa Owens, the director of the Sabine County visitors' bureau, answers an endless stream of calls from residents offering up their rooms, mobile homes and summer cabins. She estimates that about 200 folks helping with the shuttle search are staying in donated homes or marinas and hotels offering reduced rates.

Owens said she's never seen the community come together like it has since Columbia fell.

"The largeness of this event has just erased all the small, petty, daily problems, you know, the silliness that people engage in," Owens said between calls. "It's taken people out of their little, tiny nucleus to see the bigger picture."

———

EDITOR'S NOTE — AP reporter Pauline Arrillaga contributed to this report.

(ap.state.online.tx 0392 02/07/2003 04:33:38 )

[MeekOneGOP]

Rest in peace, seven heroes...

http://www.wfaa.com/watchvideo/index.jsp?SID=3683978
Requires RealPlayer

Amateur tape shows what appears to be an object
breaking off Columbia over Arizona.

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

ROBERT McCULLOUGH / © 2003, DMN
Space shuttle Columbia disintegrated as it hurtled
across North Texas shortly before 8 a.m. Saturday.
The image was taken in Flower Mound.

[MeekOneGOP]

Not a bad article, Max...

Far from shunning the media, locals have offered umbrellas to reporters taking notes in the rain and telephones to those whose cellular phones can't get a connection in the piney woods. At the Dairy Queen in nearby Pineland, reporters and search and rescue workers can get anything they want for free.

Residents also are offering their homes.

Terry Vaughn, a real estate agent in Hemphill, opened her four-bedroom home to four Dallas technicians who operate global-positioning gear used to pinpoint debris.

"If it had been me, I hope someone would have done it for me," Vaughn said. Besides, with her five children grown and out of the house, Vaughn said, she had room.

Lisa Owens, the director of the Sabine County visitors' bureau, answers an endless stream of calls from residents offering up their rooms, mobile homes and summer cabins. She estimates that about 200 folks helping with the shuttle search are staying in donated homes or marinas and hotels offering reduced rates.

Owens said she's never seen the community come together like it has since Columbia fell.

"The largeness of this event has just erased all the small, petty, daily problems, you know, the silliness that people engage in," Owens said between calls. "It's taken people out of their little, tiny nucleus to see the bigger picture."

[Moonmad27]

Thanks for posting this. As a Texan in California, I had thought often of the folks in East Texas but no article mentioned it like this one before. This will be something historic that the people in East Texas will talk about for years, like folks in Houston remember a devastating hurricane, or people in LA often mention the 1994 earthquake.

[lodwick]

Nice catch.

[OldFriend]

And nice to know just what DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS really means.

[maxwell]

"The largeness of this event has just erased all the small, petty, daily problems, you know, the silliness that people engage in," Owens said between calls. "It's taken people out of their little, tiny nucleus to see the bigger picture."

Ain't that the truth... We could all use a lil' of that, bro, though I don't wish anybody to die first...

[MeekOneGOP]

Thanks, folks ! Glad you like the article.

My Dad lives in the piney woods in east Texas, on a small lake. But he is a bit north and west of this area.

[MeekOneGOP]

Mornin' !

[Vic3O3]

Thanks for posting a nice article Meek. My family will likely be moving this summer either to DFW east, or Houston...

[MeekOneGOP]

You're welcomed...

Welcome to Texas. We even have singin' Armadillos, lol !...

Oh, bury me not on the lone prairie !

[lonestar]

I live 30 miles south of Hemphill. The weather has been cold and wet.

On Tuesday it became obvious that the searchers needed to take food into the woods because they were walking too far to come out to eat and go back.

By Thursday evening, some people in Jasper had collected, from local merchants and individuals, snack foods and put together over 2000 "snack packs" for the searchers.

The vets and pet stores donated food to feed the 15 search dogs.

And that's why I'm glad I live in Texas. People see a need and fill it.

[MeekOneGOP]

So nice to see folks pulling together to help in whatever ways they can. Glad I'm a Texan too !

Thanks for the info, FRiend...

[MeekOneGOP]

Glad I'm a Texan too...

Reminds me of a short Texas quip:

There are only two kinds of people in the world...people that are from Texas
and those that wish they were.