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

The Hemphill team was a victim of its own success at this point of the search.

Jim Wetherbee and his crew recovery leadership team in Lufkin established a regular operational routine. Reports from the field came in by phone or runner several times a day. Using supplemental information from databases and maps as they were updated, leaders in Lufkin had a good feel for the situation on the ground.

Every evening, Wetherbee’s team planned their priorities for the next day’s search and where to target the search teams based on the information available. Then they turned the plan into actionable tasks. Senior search leaders were briefed at night and the field leaders the next morning before executing the search plan. They called back with the results at the end of the day, starting the cycle over again. A feedback loop from field personnel to Wetherbee’s team served as a management check. Are you getting the support you need? What’s working and what isn’t?

Despite all the organizational expertise being employed, Wetherbee said it felt like he had been making decisions every fifteen seconds for twenty-one hours straight for each of the first three days. He was getting about three hours of sleep each night—and it was not restful sleep. There was no time to let his emotions surface when he was on duty. But in his room late at night, he was alone with his thoughts—which constantly turned to Columbia ’s crew and what had happened to them.

The intensity of the experience was already taking its toll on some people. Mark Kelly had been through the traumatic experience of recovering the remains of several of his colleagues, three of whom were his classmates in Astronaut Group 16. Kelly decided he had performed his duty. It was time to return home to be with his family and let someone else take over. Astronaut Nancy Currie was on hand the next day in Hemphill for crew recoveries. [9] Starr, Finding Heroes , 116.

Wetherbee consulted with the FBI on how to help the astronaut searchers deal with the trauma of finding the remains of their friends. At the FBI’s recommendation, he instituted a three-day limit for astronauts working in the field on crew recovery. He forbade his ops managers to participate in search operations, as they were already under enough stress. He also made it mandatory that astronauts returning from the field to Houston speak with NASA’s resident psychologists.

Wetherbee developed a briefing to prepare arriving astronauts for the psychological and emotional agony of finding remains of their colleagues in the field. The primary responsibility of each astronaut was to recover the remains of Columbia ’s crew with dignity, honor, and reverence. It was also imperative that the remains be taken to the temporary morgue as quickly as possible so that forensic evidence was not lost. Astronaut Dom Gorie would escort the remains to Barksdale.

Wetherbee instructed the astronauts to be guided by an “Eight, Eight, Eight Rule” in recoveries: “Eight days from now, eight months from now, and eight years from now, we must be able to live with the consequences of the decisions that we will make in the field. Every decision must be based on our highest judgment using our greatest professionalism and human values.” [10] Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 23. He was determined that things be handled with appropriate dignity and respect for Columbia ’s crew. He knew the astronauts would do this without fail.

Hemphill’s handful of small restaurants could accommodate only a limited number of people. As the staging area for the search teams in the morning, and the place where they returned after a day in the woods, Hemphill’s VFW hall was about the only place searchers could go for a meal. And they came in droves.

Since so many people needed to be fed at the VFW hall, Belinda Gay realized that she was needed there more urgently than out searching in the field. She had extensive food service management experience from running her own catering business and “Fat Fred’s” in town with her husband Roger. The incident command center officially deputized her on February 4 to run the food unit under Mark Allen’s logistics team. [11] Starr, Finding Heroes , 91.

People were already bringing in food and offering to help serve it at the hall, but there were overlaps and gaps. Belinda organized the volunteers, made hundreds of calls over the next several days, and informed the local radio station about the kinds of food needed each day.

Tuesday morning’s good news was that all of the debris in or near the schools throughout East Texas had been cleared, and all schools could open. The bad news was that the search teams had been using school buses to get to and from the search sites, and now the school kids needed the buses. The Hemphill command center staff called the school districts in the neighboring communities to borrow additional buses. After taking the children to school, the buses were pressed into service to take search teams out to the field, returning to pick them up after kids went home for the day.

Hundreds of searchers had arrived in Hemphill over the past several days, and many were completely unprepared for the conditions. Personnel from Texas driver license offices were sent to help with the search, but they were not told what to expect. Many of these people had never been in the woods before. Some arrived without even a change of clothes. Texas state troopers were told to walk the woods in their regular duty uniforms, which were more suited to criminal investigations and highway patrol than to wildland operations. “Plantation” forests—cleared of older trees a few years before—were now young pine stands or dense brush thickets with briars that tore clothing to shreds. Sheriff Maddox remarked that some people had so many cuts and scratches that they looked like they had been through a meat grinder.

Ground search groups braved Tuesday’s cold and rain to search the area from Farm Road 2971 south of Hemphill to US 96 near Bronson. [12] FEMA, “FEMA Updates Search, Find And Secure Activities For Columbia Emergency [4:00 p.m. Release],” news release HQ-03-035, February 4, 2003. Floridians from Kennedy Space Center were not accustomed to the cold. Safety manager Gerry Schumann told his wife that it was like “hell on earth,” between the cold, sleet, rain, and the briars. Before the week was out, thorns destroyed the three pairs of jeans he had brought with him. He passed the word back to KSC that people needed to be better prepared for what they would be facing.

Some of the searchers cut their way through the undergrowth with machetes. After a National Guardsman accidentally severed the end of his finger, machetes were forbidden on search teams. Experienced woodsmen preferred using “walking sticks.” These large wooden poles could be used for support in slippery terrain, and they could push briar patches to the ground so that people could walk over or around them.

Diarrhea took its toll on dozens of people on the search teams. Days of sharing food and makeshift sanitary facilities contributed to its spread. Muscle cramps, dehydration, and exhaustion threatened to overwhelm some searchers.

The local volunteer firemen were on average much older than many of the people arriving from outside the area. However, they knew the deep woods intimately, and they were much better prepared for the conditions. Growing up in the area taught them many tricks for dealing with the undergrowth. Marsha Cooper wrapped one of her duty shirts in duct tape to help it stand up to the punishment.

Forestry technician Jamie Sowell from the US Forest Service led a team consisting of several other Forest Service personnel, a NASA representative, and as many as fifty volunteers from the local communities. He appreciated the dedication of the searchers, but he remarked that maintaining a straight search line with so many inexperienced people was often like herding cats.