At one house, an aluminum I-beam had fallen through the carport roof, broken through the concrete floor, and buried itself in the ground. This eventually turned out to be the only structural damage sustained anywhere in Sabine County.
At that time, Hamilton was the only law officer in Sabine County who had a digital camera. After visiting the first six or seven scenes, Hamilton had already filled two data disks with photos. He realized it would be physically impossible for him to visit all the debris sightings, especially now that he knew bodies were on the ground. And there were not enough law officers in Sabine County to guard every piece of debris being discovered.
Accident Plus One Hour
Astronauts Mark Kelly and Jim Wetherbee were at their suburban Houston homes when contact with Columbia was lost. Both immediately knew the situation was dire. They rushed to the astronaut office in Building 4 South at Johnson Space Center.
As quintessential type A personalities, astronauts are biased toward acting to bring a situation under control. Patience can be a tough virtue for them to exercise, especially when the lives of their colleagues are on the line. While they awaited official orders, the astronauts at JSC took whatever actions they could. Mark Kelly and rookie Mike Good brought out the contingency checklist and reviewed the required actions. Working through the list, Kelly and Good made phone calls, and within fifteen minutes, nearly fifty people were in the astronaut office conference room. Discussions began on how to farm out the astronauts to locate Columbia’s crew.
Several of the astronauts decided to head to Ellington Field, about halfway between JSC and Houston. Ellington was the home base for the T-38 jets the astronauts flew around the country. Wetherbee drove home to pick up his flight suit and pack his overnight bag, and then drove to Ellington to await orders.
Kelly pointed out to Andy Thomas that the contingency plans never envisioned the shuttle coming down within a two-hour drive of Houston. Kelly said, “We really need to send somebody to the scene right now.”
Thomas said, “Okay. You go.”
Kelly considered his options for getting north to the accident scene as quickly as possible. He phoned Harris County constable Bill Bailey and requested a helicopter. Bailey made a few calls and phoned back. “I’m sending a car to pick you up. The coast guard is going to take you up there.” Kelly grabbed astronaut Greg “Ray J” Johnson to accompany him. They arrived at Ellington Field and boarded the waiting helicopter.
As they took off, the pilot asked, “Where are we going?”
Kelly said, “I heard there’s debris coming down at Nacogdoches. Let’s go to the airport there.”
—
While the astronaut corps mobilized, NASA management activated its Mishap Investigation Team (MIT) in the Mission Control Center at JSC. NASA appointed the MIT members as a routine matter prior to each space shuttle mission in case anything were to go wrong during the mission. Dave Whittle had been identified as the MIT chairman for STS-107.6
Whittle was the chairman of NASA’s system safety review panel and the safety manager for the Shuttle Program. He was certified as an aircraft accident investigator by the National Transportation Safety Board and the University of Southern California. He also had extensive experience investigating space accidents.
Whittle usually attended shuttle launches, but was off duty for most landings. He was at home when Mission Management Team chairperson Linda Ham called to say, “We think we’re going to need you.”
He was unaware at that point that Columbia was lost, but he knew something bad must have happened for Ham to call him at home on a Saturday morning. He told his wife, “Pack my stuff. I may be gone a long, long time.”
Astronaut Dom Gorie had just returned home to Houston that morning from a vacation in Hawaii. While he and his wife were unpacking, someone called and told him to turn on his television. Gorie was the designated astronaut representative for Whittle’s investigation team. He realized that he had to get to the office as quickly as possible. He grabbed his pre-packed “deployment” bag, said good-bye to his wife, and was at JSC to assist Whittle in less than an hour.
Whittle did not know the full extent of the situation until he was briefed in the Mission Control Center, where the Mission Management Team was gathering. After a quick briefing, Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore and Ham told Whittle, “You’ve got about thirty minutes to come back in here and tell us what you want to do.”7
Whittle’s team would be among NASA’s first responders at the scene. In this circumstance, he would be in charge of collecting and protecting all shuttle debris and impounding it for the eventual official investigation of the accident. His scope also included the sensitive matter of handling the remains of Columbia’s crew. He needed to set up a command center. It had to be a secure location, away from the press and other prying eyes, able to accommodate multiple types of support aircraft from cargo planes to T-38 jets, and had to have appropriate support facilities such as a morgue and a staging warehouse. If he needed to set up a headquarters in the field, the Department of Defense Manned Spaceflight support group was available to provide for NASA’s infrastructure needs, with tents, helicopters, food, and other necessities. However, Whittle thought it might be best to manage the investigation from a military base somewhere near the shuttle’s last known location. But where was that?
Reports were coming in of debris hitting the ground from near Dallas to Fort Polk, Louisiana. Looking at a map, Whittle saw that Carswell Naval Air Station near Fort Worth was too far north and west of the reported sightings. Fort Polk seemed too far south. Barksdale Air Force Base, near Shreveport, Louisiana, looked like a possible option for the MIT’s strategic command center.
Whittle called the vice commander of the Second Bomb Wing at Barksdale, Colonel Charles McGuirk. The base and its contingent of B-52 bombers were on alert for possible imminent action in Iraq. Despite the tense military situation, McGuirk immediately offered to host the MIT at the base. The facilities and computers from a court-martial hearing at the base were still in place and available for NASA’s immediate use. Whittle and his team could fly in and be in business that day.
—
While Dave Whittle was getting his team ready for action in Texas, NASA’s senior officials who were still at the Launch Control Center at Kennedy had to initiate a broader investigation.
One requirement of NASA’s agency-wide contingency plan for major incidents was to set up an independent review board—one not under NASA’s direction. Bill Readdy called the people who were named in the plan as members of the accident investigation board. These individuals had the requisite technical, scientific, and organizational expertise to serve on the panel.
The contingency plan did not name the board chairman. That was left to the administrator’s discretion, driven by the nature of the circumstance.
Sean O’Keefe’s thoughts turned to Admiral Harold “Hal” Gehman Jr., who had a background in complex bureaucratic organizations and had just completed an investigation of the terrorist attack on the USS Cole. Gehman’s temperament and experience seemed perfectly suited to lead the Columbia accident investigation.
Gehman heard about the accident just before O’Keefe’s deputy administrator Fred Gregory phoned to ask him to lead the board.
Accident Plus Ninety Minutes
As he left Tyler in his car and drove toward Lufkin, the FBI’s Jeff Millslagle recalled other incidents he had investigated, including the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, which left parts of the plane and remains of the passengers floating in Long Island Sound. He thought that by comparison, this would be a small incident. After all, how much of a shuttle could possibly survive a breakup and reentry from so high up?
He was twenty minutes out of Tyler when he saw a Texas Department of Public Safety officer standing by a hole in the mud beside the roadway. Millslagle asked the trooper what he was doing. “This is a piece of the shuttle. We’ve been instructed to guard these things.”
T
he closer Millslagle got to Lufkin on his ninety-mile drive, the more debris he saw.
—
Jan Amen, assistant to the state fire chief in the Texas Forest Service, had heard the explosions at her home in Nacogdoches County. She drove to the Etoile Fire Department, where she was a volunteer firefighter. She encountered pieces of the shuttle along the way. Many were like one she saw lying in the middle of Highway 103, which was over one foot in length, had three burn holes through the middle, and was twisted into a bowl shape. She and her fellow firefighters flagged and stood by pieces of debris while waiting for the Department of Public Safety to arrive.8
—
One hundred and fifty miles south of Etoile, NASA’s Mission Management Team gathered in the Action Center in the Mission Control Center building about an hour after the contingency was declared. Personnel from Kennedy, including my management team and me, teleconferenced in from a large room on the first floor of the Launch Control Center. Representatives from all the major NASA and contractor organizations either joined in person or phoned in. Ron Dittemore led the meeting. The atmosphere was solemn. As people took their places, they speculated on what might have caused the accident.
O’Keefe promised NASA’s full support, and he delivered moving words of sorrow and resolve that deeply touched the team. He announced that he had activated the International Space Station and Space Shuttle Mishap Interagency Investigation Board (which shortly thereafter was renamed the Columbia Accident Investigation Board [CAIB]), with Admiral Hal Gehman as its chairman.9
Dittemore said he was receiving reports that some debris was on the ground in Texas and Louisiana. The first question asked was, “How hazardous is it?” No one knew the extent to which the toxic and explosive materials aboard Columbia might survive reentry and make it to the ground.
Managers began to focus on recovery.10 Dave Whittle and his Mishap Investigation Team would lead NASA’s internal investigation by recovering the physical debris. Dittemore’s voice broke with emotion as he said, “Let’s go get the crew. We can’t leave them out there.”
The question arose, “What can Kennedy do to help?” Ed Mango and I huddled briefly with our team. After a few moments, someone suggested, “Why don’t we treat this like a TAL landing?”
One of the shuttle’s launch abort modes, in case an emergency prevented the vehicle from reaching orbit, was a transoceanic abort landing (TAL). Every KSC contingency plan assumed the shuttle would come down within sight of a runway or make an emergency landing at one of the TAL sites in Europe or Africa. In the event of a “nonroutine” landing, Kennedy was to deploy its Rapid Response Team (RRT), about eighty KSC engineers and technicians who were experts on the shuttle and its systems. Their role was to get the situation under control, retrieve the shuttle, and bring it back.11 The RRT seemed like the appropriate group to support this incident, even though this was unlike anything we had ever envisioned.
A few members of the RRT were trained in how to conduct crash investigations. However, we had never trained for a scenario where the orbiter broke up far from the landing site. Such a situation had always been considered a “non-credible event”—something too unlikely to happen. The emergency procedures would not be much help, either. No one yet knew where—or even if— there would be a shuttle to retrieve. NASA had no reliable information yet regarding if or where Columbia had fallen to the ground or if it had splashed into the Gulf of Mexico. We only knew that the RRT would deploy somewhere between Dallas and Florida.
I formally suggested that NASA send the Rapid Response Team to support the recovery. Dittemore and the senior leaders liked the idea. Leadership of the RRT normally fell to Kennedy’s processing flow director for the mission—Scott Thurston, in this case. However, everyone felt that a more senior person needed to head the team in this complex situation.
They appointed me to command KSC’s forces in the field.
Dittemore asked me, “When can you deploy?” I said that the air force always kept a transport plane on reserve for NASA in case of launch emergencies. It was not stationed at KSC, but could be brought to the center within six hours.
Immediately after the meeting, my team and I discussed how to begin the investigation and recovery process. We started identifying names and thinking about the logistics of getting those people onto planes to Texas as quickly as possible, either on the first transport flight that afternoon or the next day. Managers tracked people down at their children’s soccer games or other weekend activities and told them to pack a bag and get to KSC as quickly as possible. While no one knew yet where the team would deploy, there was no time to lose while waiting for better information. It was imperative to get people moving immediately to start securing any hazardous debris.
One of the people contacted was Linda Moynihan, who provided administrative support for United Space Alliance’s director of safety and quality. She was told to pack a bag for what she thought would be a week’s stay in Texas. Then she visited as many automated teller machines as she could to withdraw cash for the team in the field. Arriving in her office at KSC, she filled two copy-paper boxes with office supplies.
I called my wife Charlotte and asked her to check my “TAL packing list,” pack my suitcase, and bring it to Kennedy. I saw her shortly after lunchtime. I hugged her tight, not knowing when I would see her again.
Accident Plus Two Hours
Billy Ted Smith was the emergency management coordinator for the East Texas Mutual Aid Association, which included Jasper, Sabine, and Newton Counties. He phoned Sheriff Maddox to say that he was on his way to Hemphill with Jasper sheriff Billy Rowles, Jasper police chief Mark Allen, and several other men. They joined Maddox, Doug Hamilton, Olen Bean of the Texas Forest Service, Sabine County Judge Jack Leath, and representatives of Jasper, Newton, and Sabine Counties in Hemphill to set up an incident command post.
Maddox initially considered locating the command post at the Bronson fire hall, close to where the first partial crew remains had been found. However, Hemphill offered somewhat better communications, although the town’s facilities would likely still be inadequate.
Hemphill was a rural town of about eleven hundred residents in a county with a total population of about ten thousand souls. Its infrastructure would shortly be stretched to the limit. In early 2003, the community had only two high-speed T1 Internet lines. Maddox ordered two drops to be run from the high school’s T1 line to the fire station. Only one phone line ran into the firehouse. Maddox called the phone company and ordered ten lines to be installed immediately. Before the installation was complete, he requested that the number of lines be increased to twenty—then to thirty.
Maddox ordered all of Sabine County’s emergency personnel to report for duty. Firemen removed trucks and equipment from the fire station bays and parked everything across the street. People went to work setting up the command post. Two inmates in the town jail were carpenters. Maddox directed them to pick up plywood and two-by-fours and start building work cubicles.
Cecil Paul Mott, Hemphill’s electrical supervisor, was called in to upgrade the electrical service to the fire hall. After installing outlets, he had to replace the transformer outside the firehouse. By the time the week was over, he had filled all the power poles in the town center to capacity. He resorted to hanging transformers and lines from trees.
Fifty miles to the west, Jeff Millslagle arrived at Lufkin’s FBI office shortly after ten o’clock. The assistant US attorney was on hand, as were all of the area’s FBI agents. Phones were ringing incessantly. The agents discussed what the FBI’s role should be. Their first concerns were to determine whether anyone on the ground was injured by falling debris and whether the shuttle had been shot down or sabotaged.
Millslagle sent agents Terry Lane and Shane Ball to Hemphill and dispatched Glenn Martin to San Augustine. Most of the debris calls were coming from those two areas.
US marshals and representatives from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms arrived a
t the office, as did more people from the US Attorneys Office. It was clear that the FBI’s office was too small to serve as the central coordinating location. Brit Featherstone from the US Attorneys Office made several calls and secured the Lufkin Civic Center for use as an incident command post.
Back at the FBI office in Tyler, Pete Galbraith was having difficulty getting the attention of his superiors and conveying the urgent need to deploy more FBI support to the scene. “What’s this got to do with counterterrorism?” was their initial response. They seemed unable to grasp the severity of the problem.
Millslagle phoned his superiors in Denton and received similar pushback. Millslagle said, “I don’t think you guys get how big this thing is about to become.”
Meanwhile, Jack Colley, the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Division of Emergency Management, phoned Mark Stanford, chief of fire operations for the Texas Forest Service. Stanford had extensive experience in implementing the incident command system (ICS) to manage large all-hazard incidents. While the Texas Forest Service might lack the technical expertise to deal with the accident itself, the incident command framework provided a support structure for managing the response to a complex public safety situation. Colley knew of Stanford’s experience and asked him to get to Lufkin as quickly as possible to take control and coordinate the agencies that were responding to the accident.
Accident Plus Two Hours and Thirty Minutes
Scott Wells was deployed in Jonesboro, Arkansas, as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) on-site incident commander. Wells was a military veteran with twenty-four years of service. He left the military in 1999 to become part of FEMA’s original cadre of federal coordinating officers. On February 1, he was helping the Jonesboro community recover from power outages resulting from a severe ice storm earlier in the winter.
Bringing Columbia Home Page 7