Michael Leinbach - Bringing Columbia Home - The Untold Story of a Lost Space Shuttle and Her Crew

Lane was deeply moved by the way the astronauts handled the recoveries. He knew how horribly difficult it must have been for them to see their friends and colleagues in that condition. It was a duty far outside the scope of what any astronaut would normally be asked to perform. The strength of the astronauts’ religious convictions also surprised Lane at first. Then he realized that if these people “strap a million pounds of dynamite to their butts for someone else to light, they’d better have mighty deep faith.”

Accident Plus Three Hours Thirty Minutes

Greg Cohrs was still at his home near Hemphill when he received a call from district ranger Marcus Beard, directing him to report to the US Forest Service office, don his flight suit, and begin searching the area in a government-contracted helicopter. Cohrs arrived at the office only to learn that the helicopter was grounded because airspace over the entire area had just been restricted. Beard then sent Cohrs to the Hemphill fire station to attempt to establish joint command of the incident in Sabine County with Sheriff Maddox. [15] Greg Cohrs, “Hemphill Recovery of the STS-107 Columbia, Notes of Greg Cohrs, May 28 through June 16, 2003,” unpublished, 4.

The firehouse was a maelstrom of activity. Maddox was too busy to talk. Cohrs found Billy Ted Smith—the co-incident commander with Maddox—and offered the services and resources of the US Forest Service, which administers one-third of the land in Sabine County. Cohrs and his colleagues knew the deep woods and terrain as well as anyone. They were experienced in search and rescue methods, and they had heavy equipment to help clear paths into the woods.

Reports and unconfirmed rumors were coming in from other locations. One said that the Department of Defense would shortly take over the search-and-recovery operations. Another said that the army was being deployed. There might be hazardous or radioactive material in the field. There was classified material on the shuttle. A storage tank on the ground in San Augustine County was venting yellowish gas. Solid intelligence was still hard to come by. What was clear was that all shuttle materials, except personal items and avionics, were to be protected and left in place for subsequent retrieval. Crew remains needed to be recovered immediately.

Cohrs immediately began to organize search efforts in Sabine County. He divided his Forest Service personnel into two-person teams and began to assign priorities to investigate the reported findings. He assigned highest priority to sightings of possible crew remains. He instructed the teams to note the GPS coordinates of debris finds and log them for later recovery.

Meanwhile, representatives of various state and local agencies, who had been ordered by their leaders to help out in Sabine County, began to overrun Hemphill’s town center. Each agency tried to stake out space in the firehouse. Other volunteers were arriving faster than they could be handled.

Media trucks were descending on the town, occupying valuable space along roads that would be needed by emergency response teams. Sabine County Judge Leath ordered the area around the courthouse to be cordoned off.

Sheriff Maddox called Roger Gay, commander of Hemphill’s VFW Post, which was four miles from the town center. “Roger, you need to open up the VFW hall. We need to use it as a staging area.”

Gay replied, “No problem.”

Maddox added, “Could you come up with some sandwiches and coffee? Maybe make some tea?”

Gay again replied, “No problem. We’ll get it going.”

Gay went to the VFW hall and started making sandwiches. At lunchtime, a few people came in for food. Then a few more arrived, and then a few more—and then dozens more.

Realizing that he would quickly be overwhelmed, Roger phoned his wife Belinda, who was on her way to a baby shower in Nacogdoches. He told her he needed her help as head of the VFW Ladies’ Auxiliary. She made a U-turn and sped to the VFW hall. They began making calls, asking people to prepare food and bring it to the VFW hall.

Accident Plus Four Hours

NASA’s Mission Management Team held a second meeting at JSC to report status and update plans. The Department of Defense, the Southeast Air Defense Sector, and the National Transportation Safety Board were tied in and offered their support. FEMA and the coast guard were online. The Department of Homeland Security was involved, along with the State Department. The Rapid Response Team and I teleconferenced in from Kennedy.

Reports indicated that debris was being found from Tyler, Texas, to Louisiana. No signals from the emergency beacons on the crew’s suits had been detected. It was clear there was no hope of finding the crew alive. The astronaut office reported on how the crew’s families were being cared for. Discussions began about a memorial service.

My Rapid Response Team was scheduled to board an air force cargo plane bound for Barksdale Air Force Base at about four o’clock that afternoon. The plane could carry ninety-six passengers. Once we arrived, we would report to Dave Whittle to support his Mishap Investigation Team. Whittle would be reporting to Dave King.

Accident Plus Five Hours

In the early afternoon, Jim Wetherbee and several other astronauts began driving north from Houston to Lufkin. Along the way, they received reports of shuttle equipment that had been found on the ground.

Wetherbee was directed to one site to check out a sighting of particular importance. There he saw the charred and damaged remnants of a shuttle astronaut’s helmet in a field. He and his team made sure that the scene was secured so that the equipment would be untouched until it could be recovered properly. The helmet was a harsh reminder of his seven friends on board Columbia and what they must have gone through when their vehicle came apart.

Meanwhile, the majority of Dave Whittle’s Mishap Investigation Team had assembled in Building 30 at Johnson Space Center. The team’s two designated flight surgeons would normally have been present, but they were at Kennedy with the crew’s families. In their place, NASA flight surgeon Philip Stepaniak, MD, and Michael Chandler of Wyle Laboratories were assigned as the medical representatives to the MIT. They would be responsible for transferring any recovered crew’s remains to the Armed Services Institute of Pathology at Dover AFB for autopsy.

At the first official meeting of his team, Whittle announced that he and select members of the MIT would be deploying to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana that afternoon to set up a strategic command center. Whittle learned that FEMA was also being activated and would be setting up their command center in Lufkin because of the town’s proximity to the debris field. Being situated in Lufkin facilitated FEMA’s ability to get resources to the local communities who needed help. Whittle decided to situate leaders from his NASA team at both Barksdale and Lufkin.

Recovered shuttle debris was already appearing for sale on eBay. Jeff Millslagle asked the Houston FBI office to shut down those listings immediately. Shuttle material was government property, and unauthorized possession was a federal crime.

Dave King’s plane from Huntsville landed at the Angelina County Airport outside Lufkin. The sheriff, an FBI special agent, and a Secret Service agent met him and gave him a brief situation report.

King arrived at the FBI office shortly after one o’clock. Jeff Millslagle took him aside and found him to be still somewhat in disbelief about the situation. “We never anticipated this happening on reentry,” King told him. “The shuttle’s just a flying brick.”

King needed to start making decisions immediately about recovery operations. He had never run a recovery operation like this before. But then again, nobody had ever done anything like this.