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

Accident Plus Sixteen Hours

The Rapid Response Team leaders and I found our motel somewhere near Shreveport. I can’t recall with certainty where we were. We tossed our bags into our rooms and went back to the common area to plan for our meeting with Dave Whittle the next morning. We wrote down a few notes and started drafting procedures for workers in the field to deal with hazardous materials.

By this point, people who had been running on adrenaline all day were burning out. At about one o’clock in the morning—seventeen hours after the accident—I told everyone to go to their rooms and get some sleep. We would reconvene in five hours.

Exhausted from their long and dreadful day, everyone was appalled at the conditions in their motel rooms. Mark Borsi’s room was “beyond shabby.” He felt that if it were shown on TV, people would think that the condition was being overstated for dramatic effect. The bedsprings were broken, and the blanket had holes in it. Borsi was glad that he and the team were carrying weapons, because “we were in a nasty part of whatever town that was.”

I went back to my room and flipped on the television out of habit, and there it was again— Columbia breaking up in the sky. All the day’s suppressed emotions finally poured to the surface. I had maintained a stoic facade all day for my team, as I was taught a leader should do. Now, in the privacy of my room, I lost it.

I met with the discipline leads on the Rapid Response Team in our Shreveport motel lobby for coffee at six o’clock on Sunday, February 2, and then we drove to Barksdale to meet the other initial responders and begin our work—whatever that might be.

We hit a snag almost immediately. A guard denied us entrance at the Barksdale main gate because we lacked military identification. Jerry Ross, a retired air force colonel, showed his ID and requested that the guard talk to the appropriate officer, who quickly resolved the situation.

I found Dave Whittle at Nose Dock 6, introduced myself, and offered the services of the Rapid Response Team. I said, “Dave, I report to you.” By grade level, I was the senior leader, but Whittle had the larger role as the chairman of the Mishap Investigation Team. My “paper” seniority was irrelevant. He appreciated my straightforward approach, and we got to work.

Dave chaired the first Mishap Investigation Team meeting at eight o’clock. My management team and I were there, as were Scott Wells from FEMA and Robert Benzon and Clint Crookshanks from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). NASA’s Dave King and Jim Wetherbee conferenced in from Lufkin. Representatives from Homeland Security, the FBI, the armed forces pathology team, and state emergency personnel from Texas and Louisiana also called in.

Ralph Roe, head of NASA’s Orbiter Project Office, summarized the data received from Columbia just before communications were lost. Temperature sensors showed heat inside the left wing. A signal—possibly spurious—indicated that the left landing gear was down and locked. (The landing gear are not supposed to be extended until a few seconds before touchdown.) Then the wing sensors failed, and seconds later all communications were lost. These were the only indications of trouble. The NTSB representatives cautioned that everyone needed to keep a completely open mind during the investigation. They said that no one should form any opinions at this stage of the process, because it might cause people to discount evidence or miss potential areas for investigation.

Dave King established three overarching priorities for the upcoming search-and-recovery operations. First was to protect public safety by finding and collecting hazardous debris. Whittle’s Mishap Investigation Team, supported by my Rapid Response Team, was responsible for this effort. Second was to locate and recover the remains of Columbia ’s crew. Jim Wetherbee and the astronaut corps were NASA’s leaders for this task. Finally, searchers needed to find and recover data recording devices and sensitive communications equipment. These memory devices—cameras, computers, and “black boxes”—might contain information salient to the accident investigation. Everyone in the field would need to be alerted to look out for these items.

The NTSB’s Bob Benzon, whose experience included the investigation of the Pan Am 103 terrorist bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, estimated that no more than 10 percent of the shuttle would make it to the ground. He believed that generally only the densest components would survive reentry. There was no precedent for making a more accurate assessment. Nothing such as this had ever happened before.

A glance at the hundreds of pushpins already marking debris sightings on the wall-mounted map of Texas confused me. If Benzon’s estimate was right, how could we be receiving so many reports of debris along a path more than 250 miles long? This didn’t look like the kind of crash scene we were expecting.

Once the meeting adjourned, Whittle, the other managers, and I discussed what we could do to gather intelligence about materials found in the debris field. We decided to send out several members of the RRT to investigate at various locations—Dallas, Lufkin, Sabine County, NASA’s weather balloon research facility at Palestine, and Louisiana.

Meanwhile, back at Kennedy Space Center, the Mishap Response Team was in action. Led by Denny Gagen, this team provided the logistics support for whatever we needed in the debris recovery effort. One of their first tasks was to send over the next wave of personnel from Kennedy to supplement our recovery forces. We needed them immediately.

That morning, our security director Mark Borsi worked with the air force to set up the temporary morgue in a hangar bay. The team immediately went to work outfitting it in a manner appropriate for the solemnity of its intended purpose. They procured American and Israeli flags, as well as refrigerated storage facilities. Borsi was deeply grateful for the air force’s commitment to provide whatever NASA needed for our fallen astronauts.

In the piney woods of East Texas one hundred miles due south of Barksdale, Hemphill’s population had nearly doubled overnight, as news media, officials, and volunteer searchers made their way to the town. News of the sightings of crew remains had spread through the area. People showed up at the Hemphill fire station, offering to help search for Columbia ’s crew.

Dwight Riley was among those eager to be of assistance. A resident of Sabine County for all of his sixty-five years, he knew the area as well as anyone. State troopers at the fire station directed him to the VFW hall, which had been pressed into service as the staging area for volunteers.

At the hall, Riley observed “hordes of people” in sneakers, lightweight pants, and other clothing that he knew would not be any match for the conditions in the field. He located the woman who was assembling search teams and volunteered his services. “I might be old,” he told her, “but I’m up to the challenge.”

As Belinda Gay, head of the VFW Women’s Auxiliary, served breakfast to some of the volunteers, she listened to the stories about the crew remains recoveries the day before, and learned that the command center urgently needed more volunteers. She told her husband Roger that she felt compelled to join them. He encouraged her to do what she felt she needed to do. Belinda walked with the search teams for the next three days, and Roger stayed behind to run the food service operation.

Sixty miles to the west, leaders from myriad state and federal agencies had poured into the Lufkin Civic Center overnight and into the morning. The presence of so many type-A personalities and the significance of the event electrified the atmosphere in the building. Everyone wanted to be useful. Many felt compelled to be in charge of something.