HEMPHILL, Texas — At the end of a two-lane road in Sabine County, state maintenance ends and a clay road begins. That is where investigators found human remains Saturday, possibly those of a crew member from the space shuttle Columbia. It also has turned into a starting point for investigators searching for shuttle debris.
The Associated Press said the space shuttle Columbia lost communication with Mission Control at about 9 a.m. Saturday.
The 16-day mission ended with the explosion of Columbia and the loss of its crew members, Rick Husband, shuttle commander, William McCool, shuttle pilot, David Brown, mission specialist, Michael Anderson, payload commander, Kalpana Chawla, mission specialist, Laurel Clark, mission specialist and Ilan Ramon, Israeli payload specialist.
Volunteers in Hemphill entered the Sabine National Forest on Sunday at 11:20 a.m. searching a 250 square mile area for debris.
Two minutes later, a volunteer yelled indicating he found something. As volunteers taped off the area, a helicopter flew overhead to locate the item.
Sabine Parish sheriff Tom Maddox said volunteers found about 130 debris sites Saturday.
“Two large pieces of debris were found [Sunday],” Maddox said. “They are being tagged and marked. The two large pieces are four to five feet in diameter, and range in length from a few inches to four to five feet.”
Most of the debris is spread throughout east Texas, mainly in the cities of Nacogdoches and Hemphill. Authorities found other debris in Shreveport, La. and in the Toledo Bend Reservoir, the body of water separating Louisiana and Texas.
By Sunday, volunteers reached the 160th debris site.
Maddox said the slow increase in the total number of sites does not reflect a lack of searching but that 75 percent of the terrain volunteers must cover is shrouded by trees.
Volunteer firefighter and search team member Karen Nixon said the area is like a swampy marshland.
“There is real tall grass and trees. It’s a thicket,” Nixon said. “You need a chain saw to get through it; we are using machetes.”
In Denning, Texas, a community in San Augustine County near Sabine, another search crew began their search at 3 p.m. Sunday.
Nearby Angelina County’s Sheriff Kent Henson headed the 17-person search into the national forest. Henson and his crew faced the same difficulties Nixon described as they moved through a 15 square mile area.
The group split on trucks, four-wheelers and foot to begin the trek. A dense pine forest full of large thorny thickets proved laborious to wade through. Add uneven ground, a swampy creek and other litter, such as old car doors and rusted cans, and the quest for evidence became slow.
Within the first hour of searching, the crew recovered only two pieces of debris.
Henson said there was a large amount of debris found Saturday, but all crews still are depending on the public to tell them of new sites.
Members of the FBI, NASA, Environmental Protection Agency, Department of Defense, United States Marshals and the Federal Environment Management Agency are assisting Hemphill residents and other law enforcement agencies in the search process, Maddox said.
However, Maddox said no one is moving the debris until the EPA arrives because it still is potentially toxic. Though the FBI has begun collecting body parts, the Shreveport Times reports the EPA could take days or weeks to clear all the debris.
Billy Smith, emergency coordinator for Sabine County, said authorities will use sonar equipment and underwater cameras to determine what debris is in the Toledo Bend reservoir.
The EPA has not given any indication that the reservoir is toxic, but still is taking samples of the water as a precautionary measure, Smith said.
Barbara Sepulvado, resident of Zwolle, La. near Toledo Bend, said she traveled to Hemphill to see what was happening.
“In all the places it could have happened, it happened here,” Sepulvado said in awe.
She said she did not hear the explosion, but when her son told her what happened, she was scared.
“We didn’t know the effects or why it happened,” Sepulvado said.
While no reports were made of injuries in the Louisiana Toledo Bend area, hospitals treated eight east Texas residents for burns and other minor injuries received by touching shuttle debris, Maddox said. No new cases were reported Sunday.
Though investigators are unsure why Columbia disintegrated in mid-air, the Associated Press reported the government and NASA are each appointing an independent board to investigate the catastrophe.