Posted on 02/03/2003 6:32:26 PM PST by RCW2001
NACOGDOCHES, Texas –– Searchers found the front of the space shuttle Columbia's nose cone buried deep in the ground near the Louisiana border, officials said Monday night.
"It's reasonably intact," said Warren Zahner, a senior coordinator for the Environmental Protection Agency, which is overseeing collection of shuttle debris .
Other officials said the nose cone was burrowed deep in the ground. A crew was to return to the site about three miles west of Hemphill, near the Louisiana border, on Tuesday to excavate the nose cone.
The shuttle broke up 39 miles over Texas and fell to Earth as it headed for a landing in Florida on Saturday. All seven astronauts aboard perished.
By late Monday afternoon, some 12,000 pieces of debris had been collected.
Officials at the site where the nose cone was discovered described a hole about 20 feet wide in the pine forest. About 10 searchers emerged from the woods with bags full of debris, including metal objects. They filled a bed of a pickup truck with debris.
Throughout the day, investigators went from rural schools to a college campus gathering pieces of the space shuttle strewn across a pine-cloaked disaster scene larger than West Virginia.
Search teams hunted down remains and debris in the rivers and woods of Louisiana and Texas – including a 6-to-7-foot chunk of the shuttle's cabin found in one rural county. Environmental and explosives experts, along with NASA officials, bagged up wreckage and transported it to airports now serving as evidence warehouses.
"We are collecting material that we find on the ground even as small as a quarter," said Gary Moore, a regional coordinator for the EPA. "Obviously, you're going to get to a point where you can't collect every single speck."
The agency is using an airplane equipped with infrared sensors that can spot debris that might be tainted with hazardous chemicals, as well as a mobile unit on the ground to determine whether any shuttle wreckage is emitting toxic chemicals.
Divers plied the murky waters of Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas-Louisiana state line on Monday, scouting for what authorities believe is a car-size chunk of the shuttle. Nothing was found, although divers were expected to return Tuesday with sonar equipment.
NASA shuttle program manager Ron Dittemore said NASA was particularly interested in any pieces that may have fallen from Columbia as far west as New Mexico, Arizona or California. The FBI was checking reports of possible debris in Arizona.
"It's like looking for a needle in a haystack," Dittemore said, referring to tracking bits of the 6-by-6 inch thermal tiles that covered Columbia. "But that is not going to keep us from looking for it."
Recovery teams gathered Monday at a federal command post in Lufkin to be dispatched to counties across the state, said Sue Kennedy, emergency management coordinator for Nacogdoches County. A seven-member squad in Nacogdoches removed 25 pieces of debris from the grounds at Douglass School, whose 340 students in kindergarten through 12th grade stayed home for the day. They then moved on to another public school before heading to Stephen F. Austin State University.
Recovered debris and human remains began arriving at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana on Monday "in everything from helicopters to rental cars," NASA spokesman Steve Nesbitt said.
NASA examiners and the independent investigative team headed by retired Adm. Harold W. Gehman Jr. have set up shop at the base in a room with a large map, using pushpins to mark the thousands of debris sites. The map was color-coded according to the size of the particles.
The goal is to try to reconstruct what's left of Columbia, and establish a sequence of how each part peeled off during the shuttle's ill-fated journey home.
The recovery effort is daunting due to the size and scope of the debris field. It stretched west to east 380 miles from Eastland, Texas, to Alexandria, La., and north-south 230 miles from Sulphur Springs, Texas, to metropolitan Houston.
Louisiana state police confirmed more than two dozen chunks of debris in 11 different parishes. Authorities recovered a 3-by-4-foot metal panel with small holes from a thicket in Sabine Parish, on the Texas border. Vernon Parish chief deputy Calvin Turner said four chunks of metal were found in the parish
"We'll be finding stuff months down the road. I'd say hunting season is when people will be picking stuff up, or we'll never find it at all," Turner said.
In Texas, Gov. Rick Perry said wreckage had been found in 33 counties sprawling 28,000 square miles of landscape – 10 percent of the entire state, and an area larger than West Virginia.
The area where wreckage was being found expanded westward Monday, said Michael Kostelnik, NASA deputy associate administrator. One debris collection center was opened at the former Carswell Air Force Base in Fort Worth, 180 miles northwest of the Lufkin command center.
Findings included a 3-by-3 foot piece of metal in a bank parking lot in Nacogdoches and a 1-foot diameter piece of gray metal in front of the courthouse. Among the more significant discoveries: a huge section of cabin discovered in a rural wooded area east of Nacogdoches.
County Sheriff Thomas Kerss would not disclose the exact location or provide details, but said teams would continue scouring remote forests in the hunt for more cabin components.
He said federal agents were heading to a home to look for stolen shuttle parts. No arrests have been made, he said.
Kerss stressed that recovering the remains of Columbia's seven-member crew was a top priority. Authorities confirmed about 15 sites where human remains have been found in the county, Kerss said, again declining to provide details.
I live near the debris area and I haven't heard of anybody being hit. A fisherman on Toledo Bend thought somebody was shooting at him. Said pieces were shooting by like bullets. He got the off the water as fast as he could.
I was interested in topo maps of the area from Ca/Nv line to west Texas. Seems that country is pretty wild.
OK, OK... like I said: Nothing personal to you, in fact I added that because I hadn't seen your screen name saying that before. But I've seen that darn thing so many times over the last couple of days I sorta snapped.
No worries here. ...Get any ducks? :-)
To which county are you referring?
Hemphill is in Sabine County, population 10,469 (2000 Census). Nacogdoches County, also mentioned in the story, has 59,203, not counting any of the 10,000 University students who chose to be counted at home rather than at school.
Sabine Parish is also mentioned in the story. It has over 23,000 folks per the 2000 Census. http://www.census.gov/
The woody-land between Hemphill, San Augustine and Nachodoches, coupled with the bayou country of Louisiana, will make "finding" debris a true needle in a haystack job. I have said this on another thread, but truly believe it is worth repeating: the folks that live in those regions are "hunters." They know every nook-and-cranny of the terrain... they are on a mission!! They will be a great asset, IMHO.
I know there are gators in the bayous and swamps... how about in Toledo Bend??? (gulp)
Yes, and rooftops too.
Yes, and rooftops too.
heheeehehe... well, e-spank this...
[hmm... sudden thought for domain registration crosses mind.]
Actually, as a professor of mine once said: "no, there are no stupid questions, only stupid people."
[acquire Yakav Smirnoff voice] EEZZ JOOKE. [end Yakov]
I'm quite aware, and I didn't, even in my reply, belittle the poster, but only the question, which had been posted so voluminously before.
There's a lotta frayed nerves around here. Sorry to and my own to the list.
The Lord had nothing to do with the breakup nor would he have the parts fall on populated regions for sentimental purposes.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.