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

Pat Oden emailed a friend: “We have more National Guard that arrived Thursday, too. They are very young, and when you meet them in town, at the grocery store, etc., they come up to you and thank you for taking such good care of them. They are being housed mainly at the school gym, and have been taken more blankets, pillows, etc. We are now washing the searchers’ clothes, as the going has been tough—wet and cold… All, to a man, thank us profusely for our help and concern for their well being during this emotional task. And it is very emotional… my neighbors have been searching also, and two of them and their team found human remains day before yesterday. The man staying with me found remains yesterday. Most of the remains are being found in and near Hemphill, most in our dense national forests, briar patches up to six feet tall and they must go through these, not around them. Very hard on these men, but they are very dedicated and rising to the occasion.” [32] Pat Oden email, February 8, 2003.

The tight bond of the small town to the recovery of Columbia and her crew led to a saying that quickly spread throughout the community: “Their mission became our mission.” [33] This motto appears on a commemorative T-shirt that Belinda Gay was wearing in a photograph dated February 10, 2003.

The following day, Sunday, February 9, 1,350 searchers walked in the areas of Sabine County between US 96 and Toledo Bend Reservoir, trying to complete the coverage of a mile-wide path along the new search centerline. The deployment went quicker than the previous day, but there were still problems coordinating so many people. Searchers worried that the cold rain would cause them to be pulled from the field again.

Overnight, the Lufkin command staff decided to pull one of the National Guard teams from Hemphill to search in an area of interest in San Augustine. However, they forgot to inform the Hemphill command post that the unit was being redeployed, which created accountability concerns.

Greg Cohrs felt obligated to accept all the volunteer help being offered, but the huge influx of searchers was overwhelming the leadership span of control and the incident support system. As he feared, the inefficiency of working with so many untrained people in large groups meant that not much debris was located over the weekend. More troublesome, the two remaining crew members were still missing.

After a period of high winds damaged branches throughout the forest, helicopter searches for broken branches in the treetops were no longer producing results. Instead, Don Eddings, flying in a US Forest Service–contracted helicopter, was now on the lookout for buzzards. Every mid-morning, the birds would leave their rooftop perches and begin circling. The search team’s helicopter would fly in to scatter the buzzards and then notice where they started circling again. Eddings would call in the location so ground teams could search the area.

Airborne assets from NASA and the Department of Defense also aided in the search. Although specific details on the technologies involved were not divulged, the incident command team could get detailed information on the location, movement, and number of coyotes and buzzards in the forest.

After so many days of frustrating searches without results, Greg Cohrs and Terry Lane each prayed on the morning of February 10 that the search for the crew would be fruitful that day. [34] Interviews with Greg Cohrs, Terry Lane, Tom Maddox. During Monday’s morning briefing at the VFW hall, Brother Fred Raney led a prayer for good weather. He closed with, “Lord, let us find the remaining astronauts.”

Help from the Department of Interior arrived. Cohrs was transitioned to another incident command team, led by Mark Ruggiero of the US Fish and Wildlife Service. Relieved from having to attend so many meetings, Cohrs could now better focus on planning and directing the search operations.

About 850 searchers were in Sabine County that day, down from the weekend’s mob. To everyone’s surprise and frustration, the contingent from the Department of Public Safety—about three hundred officers—had been rotated out and replaced by an entirely new group, who had to be brought up to speed. School was back in session, which complicated getting the searchers to and from the field, since they had been using school buses over the weekend.

Feedback from the search team leaders led Cohrs to believe that the area between Highway 87 and the Yellowpine Lookout tower had not been covered effectively. He sent some of the searchers back to cover the area again. He had a strong hunch that they might find at least one crew member there. They found nothing of significance.

One of the National Guard units, however, located one of the missing astronauts in mid-morning near Toledo Bend Reservoir and Farm Road 2928. Everyone was elated that another crew member had been found after nine days of such intense effort. However, since this sighting was so close to the reservoir, Cohrs was worried that the last crew member might be in the lake.

Cohrs directed Don Eddings to search the Six Mile and Big Sandy Coves areas of Toledo Bend. Eddings saw nothing from his helicopter.

Rumors spread among the search teams that the last of the crew members had finally been recovered. There was an understandable and unfortunate letdown when information came that evening that the seventh crew member had yet to be located. [35] Stepaniak, Loss of Signal , 28.

During his search team’s lunch break, local resident Mike Alexander struck up a conversation with Dan Sauerwein, a volunteer searcher who was new to the team that day. Sauerwein told Alexander that he worked in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab—the enormous pool used for space walk training in Houston. Sauerwein took a week’s leave from his job and drove to Hemphill to help search for the astronauts. He brought sturdy clothing but had neglected to make arrangements for lodging, so he had slept the previous night in his car. Alexander immediately offered him a room at his house, joining two other searchers that Alexander was already hosting. Sauerwein later said that he had never been treated so well. As happened countless other times throughout the recovery period, this act of kindness between unlikely strangers cemented a long-lasting friendship.

Greg Cohrs’s day did not end on a happy note, despite the recovery of the sixth member of Columbia ’s crew. The command trailer in which he was working was beset by an infestation of wasps. [36] Cohrs, “Notes,” 13.

On Tuesday, February 11, Mike Alexander and Dan Sauerwein’s search team emerged from the woods of the Sabine National Forest in sight of the Toledo Bend Reservoir. Someone looked behind them and called for the line to stop. Turning around, Sauerwein was amazed to see shredded canvas high in the treetops—material from one of Columbia ’s experiment packages. He thought that if so much of that material was in the treetops near the reservoir, there must be even more in the lake.

In the mid-morning, one of the Forest Service teams called to report they had located the last crew member, near Housen Bayou between Route 87 and the Yellowpine Lookout. This was in the vicinity of where the FBI and Greg Cohrs had suspected something significant would be found.

Cohrs’s feelings of joy and relief overwhelmed him. Successfully recovering the crew had seemed so improbable ten days ago, considering that Columbia had disintegrated two hundred thousand feet high and traveling in excess of 12,000 miles per hour. His careful planning, his insistence on maintaining a disciplined and methodical search, his determination, and his faith had all paid off. All of the crew members’ remains were recovered along a fourteen-mile-long path within the one-mile-wide search area.