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

Cooper’s team received instructions to investigate a call from a distraught woman who had found something on her property. She drove her US Forest Service colleagues Don Eddings and Felix Holmes to the woman’s farmhouse, followed by several other cars of searchers. The woman told them she had stuck a tree limb in the ground to mark what she found. Cooper and her team walked far out into the pasture by flashlight until they saw the tree limb.

It was planted in the ground next to a pile of cow manure.

Cooper and her team burst out laughing. Their nerves were so raw from the long, horrible day that this situation seemed hilarious. “At that moment, we needed that pile of crap,” Cooper recounted.

The searchers called it a day. Cooper went home. She had one thing left to do before she collapsed into bed.

Remembering her dreadful encounter with the crew remains at the start of her first search of the day, she took off her expensive new boots. She walked outside, placed them in the burn barrel, and set them on fire.

By the end of the day after the accident, operations had evolved into two parallel efforts, one for recovering the crew and the other for protecting the public from hazards and collecting the wreckage from the ship. Each task had its own distinct objectives and was led by different NASA personnel.

On the morning of Monday, February 3, the teams searching for the remains of Columbia ’s crew gathered for breakfast and the safety and operational briefing at Hemphill’s VFW hall, reviewing subjects including weather forecasts, search areas, and team assignments. Astronaut Brent Jett conveyed the plan from search headquarters in Lufkin that the search teams in San Augustine and Sabine should concentrate their efforts on the areas where it was most likely that crew remains could be found quickly. [1] Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 25–7. He also highlighted the special shuttle components that NASA wanted the teams to look for. These included items such as the Orbiter Experiment system recorder, cameras, computers, and communications equipment.

Greg Cohrs now fielded six groups led by US Forest Service personnel, totaling about 175 searchers. The Texas National Guard deployed about 150 searchers divided into three search parties. Cohrs sent the Forest Service groups on either side of the area that was searched the previous day, between State Highway 83 and Bronson. The new Forest Service groups searched either side of the area covered the previous day near Beckcom Road. Cohrs deployed the National Guard teams in the Bronson area, headed northwest toward US 96.

Cohrs also had twenty-eight people, divided into fourteen teams, to respond to calls about debris sightings. Six FBI Evidence Recovery Teams of two people each responded to calls from the public or from the search teams regarding possible crew remains.

Military spotters would be aloft looking for broken branches in the forest treetops—evidence of things falling from the sky at a high speed. [2] Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 25–7. Some of the Blackhawk helicopters carried canine search units to assist in locating crew remains.

Cold, light rain showers made footing treacherous in the field. Some searchers slipped and injured themselves. One woman fell and broke a hip; she had to be carefully extracted from the deep woods.

The ground searches located two more of Columbia ’s crew that day. Both were found in the Housen Hollow area between Farm to Market Road (FM) 2024 and FM 184. [3] Cohrs, “Notes,” 6. The first call came in about three-thirty in the afternoon. The remains of the second astronaut were found nearby, while the recovery team was still in the area. [4] Starr, Finding Heroes , 81–8.

As the recovery team went into the woods from the road to find the astronaut’s remains, a white dog followed them, staying thirty or forty feet away. Sheriff Maddox assumed the dog belonged to the owner of the property. He worried about keeping the dog away from the crew members’ remains, but this turned out not to be an issue. The dog stopped and lay down near Maddox while Brother Fred Raney read his words beside the fallen astronaut. To Maddox’s surprise, the dog covered its head with its paws while Brother Fred led the prayer service. At the end of the service, the dog led the team out to the road. Then the dog went back into the woods and was not seen again. It did not belong to the property owner. No one knew whose it was or where it came from. [5] Interview with Marsha Cooper. Several years after the accident, the sister of one of Columbia ’s crewmen came to Sabine County to visit the location where her brother had been recovered. Marsha Cooper was her escort and host. As they sat outside and talked the evening she arrived, the astronaut’s sister told stories about her brother’s childhood. She said that he used to enjoy fishing with their father, who would often remark about seeing a reflection of a white dog in the water. Cooper said she was stunned. This astronaut’s remains were found near the water. His was the recovery at which the white dog had followed the sheriff and the rest of the group into the woods to the site. Cooper told the astronaut’s sister about the incident, and they both broke into tears.

Five of Columbia ’s crew had now been located and recovered. Hopes ran high that the other two would soon be found.

Incident commanders in Hemphill experienced challenges in communicating with their people in the field. Cell phone coverage was spotty or nonexistent in much of the area. Billy Ted Smith asked his logistics chief, Mark Allen, to contact the wireless phone companies about installing temporary cellular service towers in Sabine County. Verizon agreed to provide the recovery effort with trucks carrying portable emergency cell phone towers, as well as a box of cell phones. These would be provided at no cost to the operation, with one request—that when Smith next briefed CNN, he would publicly thank Verizon for the donation. [6] Interviews with Billy Ted Smith and Mark Allen; Sabine County incident management team press briefing on February 3, 2003, edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0302/03/ip.00.html . Smith’s public acknowledgment encouraged other wireless phone services to donate additional portable towers and cell phones. [7] Starr, Finding Heroes , 90.

Now three days into the recovery period, the Hemphill command center was running at full throttle. The US Forest Service personnel and local law enforcement officers used their training in the incident command system to create clear lines of authority and ensure that important issues were being addressed. The leadership team built upon each member’s training and expertise. Those who had never been through a major crisis quickly came up to speed.

At the same time, some of the command team leaders were ready to pass the responsibility for managing the recovery on to better-resourced organizations. Rumors circulated that the Department of Defense would take over the search operations.

When DOD representatives arrived in Hemphill on the third day, the command team greeted them and expressed their relief at being able to turn over the reins to the military. Much to their surprise, they learned that the officers were there only to inspect the operation. Everything appeared to be working well, so the military had no reason to take charge.

Inquiries about NASA, FEMA, or the US Forest Service assuming control were similarly dismissed. None of the forty-six federal, state, and local agencies on the scene saw any need to step in and take over an operation that was obviously working well. [8] Cohrs, “Notes,” 6; interviews with Billy Ted Smith and Mark Allen.