Bringing Columbia Home

by Michael D. Leinbach

  Millslagle replied, “You got it.”

  —

  President Bush addressed the nation from the White House Cabinet Room at 2:04 p.m. Eastern Time. “My fellow Americans,” he began, “this day has brought terrible news and great sadness to our country. At nine a.m., Mission Control in Houston lost contact with our space shuttle Columbia. A short time later, debris was seen falling from the skies above Texas …

  “The Columbia is lost. There are no survivors.”

  Accident Plus Six Hours

  Chief Flight Director Milt Heflin and Space Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore said in a press conference at Johnson Space Center that it was too early to blame the accident on the foam strike on Columbia’s wing. Dittemore noted that the Mission Management Team had concluded while Columbia was in orbit that the foam strike was not a concern. He reiterated, “That is the case today. We have no information that would say that is not the case.”16

  —

  Calls were flooding into the Sabine County command center at an alarming rate. Maintaining order was nearly impossible. Teams that had been sent out to the field to investigate calls were not returning to the command center; they were constantly being interrupted or distracted by worried citizens. As soon as responders left a scene after investigating one sighting, someone else would flag them down along the road. Greg Cohrs eventually had to rein in the teams and instruct them to investigate only their assigned sightings. If stopped by citizens in the field, they could take information and report it to the dispatcher to be dealt with sequentially, but they could not stay to investigate further. It was the only way to regain control on the first day of the recovery.17

  Searches in the field that afternoon were loosely structured. Searchers were looking for anything of interest, primarily any possible remains of the crew or their personal effects. Many of the search teams did not have GPS equipment. They called in descriptions of where items were found and flagged them to be retrieved later.

  Shuttle debris was everywhere around them.

  —

  A half hour later, Dave Whittle called Ellington Field to arrange transportation for the Mishap Investigation Team to Barksdale. NASA’s infamous Vomit Comet—the Boeing 707 used for zero-G training flights—flew the JSC contingent and the MIT’s equipment to Barksdale. They departed Ellington at about 3:30 p.m. Central Time.

  At Kennedy, the Rapid Response Team and I should have been leaving at about the same time. However, there were delays getting an air force plane to us. It was frustrating to wait in the Launch Control Center when we were so anxious to get to the scene and start working.

  Accident Plus Eight Hours

  Jim Wetherbee and his carload of astronauts arrived at Lufkin in the late afternoon. Wetherbee found the FBI’s Jeff Millslagle and introduced himself as the representative from the astronaut office.

  Wetherbee asked, “How can I help?”

  Millslagle looked at him. “What’s your plan?”

  Wetherbee thought that perhaps he hadn’t spoken clearly, and he repeated, “I’m Jim Wetherbee from the crew office in Houston, and I’m here to help.”

  Millslagle once again asked, “What’s your plan?”

  Wetherbee then began to realize the responsibility he bore as the senior astronaut representative. People were looking to him for direction and answers. He knew he had to be quick and accurate in establishing a plan of action.

  Wetherbee located Dave King, and the two discussed their roles. King would be the “up and out” person, interfacing with the senior leaders of the many agencies involved, the White House, and NASA headquarters. King assigned Wetherbee as the crew recovery’s “down and in” leader, with operational decision authority for anything related to searching for and recovering Columbia’s astronauts. He would interface with the local FBI, FEMA, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Texas Army National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety—and what eventually grew to be forty-four different federal, state, and local organizations involved in the search for the crew.

  Wetherbee took a deep breath and got to work.

  The NASA checklists and contingency plans at Wetherbee’s disposal contained valuable information—names, phone numbers, and roles and responsibilities. All this would come in handy later on in the investigation. However, it was inadequate for the immediate situation, which was chaotic and still evolving.

  He drew on his naval experience and training for what to do in a catastrophe like the one he was facing. First, he would establish his command center, find out what resources were available, and gather intelligence from the field. Then, he could develop a plan and staff the key positions with his fellow astronauts. Only then would he feel that he had taken control of the situation rather than reacting to it.

  FEMA’s Emergency Operations Vehicle arrived in Lufkin from Denton, Texas, late in the afternoon. FEMA parked the eighty-two-foot-long tractor trailer in the lot adjacent to the Civic Center. A section of the trailer expanded sideways, forming a work area that accommodated a twenty-five-person FEMA response team. Equipped with electrical generators, satellite radio transceivers, computers, desks, file servers, printers, and copiers, it was FEMA’s self-contained command center.18

  Meanwhile, personnel from FBI, NASA, and other agencies moved from Lufkin’s FBI office to the Civic Center and began to set up shop.

  Mark Stanford arrived from the Texas Forest Service office with a truckload of supplies. He went inside the Civic Center to take a look at the situation. To his trained eye, the command center was beginning to take shape, but it would have appeared as complete chaos to an outsider. Representatives from myriad state, local, and federal agencies were scurrying around and carving out space for their operations. Stanford understood that this was completely normal, given the magnitude and recency of the tragedy and the number of agencies involved.

  Stanford knew that he would be immediately shot down, laughed at, or ignored if he announced that “the Texas Forest Service is here to bring order to the situation!” His experience showed that the best way to get a team to embrace you in a disaster situation was to make yourself as helpful as possible. “Figure out who’s in charge by observing the scene. Then go up to that person and say, ‘What three things are biting you on the ass?’ And then you make it your goal to fix those three things. Then you’re part of the team.”

  Accident Plus Eight Hours Thirty Minutes

  Upon Dave Whittle’s arrival in Barksdale Air Force Base at 4:30 p.m., the base’s deputy commander introduced himself and took Whittle to the facilities assigned to NASA. He again promised the military’s full support for whatever the Mishap Investigation Team needed—office space, lodging, transportation, and so forth.

  Now it was time to establish Whittle’s strategic command center at the base. He divided up the team into their areas of responsibility. By 5:30, the team’s flight surgeons were already meeting with Barksdale’s medical staff to arrange the handling of any crew remains that might be recovered and brought to the base.19

  FEMA’s Scott Wells arrived and located Whittle, who was swamped with trying to establish order. Whittle challenged him: “Who are you, and what the hell are you doing here?”

  “I’m Scott Wells, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing here. But I’m here!” That broke the tension. Wells immediately began assessing the situation to see what support FEMA could provide. Within hours, FEMA brought in computers and phone lines to enable Whittle’s team to begin tracking debris sighting reports.

  MIT members set up the situation room. An airman brought in a set of sectional maps of East Texas and Louisiana and tacked them onto the wall. As debris reports came in, the locations were marked with color-coded pushpins on the map. Johnson Space Center and the Lufkin disaster field office were on the phone with the MIT almost constantly.

  Whittle directed that every piece of debris be photographed in place and its GPS position recorded. The information would be entered into a computerized dat
abase to enable analysts to plot what debris was falling and where. This capability would be important in directing searchers to look for specific items or for crew remains. Whittle also required that everyone sign in upon entering Nose Dock 6, the aircraft hangar where the debris would be processed. This would ensure the integrity of the investigation’s debris accounting system.

  Accident Plus Eleven Hours

  A series of aircraft delays pushed the scheduled mid-afternoon departure of my Rapid Response Team from Kennedy Space Center to eight o’clock that evening. The C-141 cargo plane finally arrived, and we loaded everything through the ramp at the back of the plane. The seventy-nine of us buckled ourselves into canvas sling seats lining both sides of the cargo hold. Sitting on rollers mounted down the middle of the plane were two pallets of pre-packed supplies, safety equipment, protective suits for handling hazardous chemicals, and tools that might be needed by the first wave of recovery personnel arriving at a shuttle accident scene.

  I tried to collect my thoughts about what our team would be doing once we reached Barksdale. The situation was changing so rapidly that I still had no feel for the scope of the task awaiting us.

  As the leader, I felt the need to say something to the team over the plane’s PA system in this moment of sorrow and anxiety. I offered a few impromptu words that I hoped were comforting and motivational, but which I am sure were inadequate to convey the depths of the feelings everyone shared.

  I was exhausted, numb, apprehensive—and flying off to lead a mission unlike any for which I had ever prepared.

  I sat next to KSC security director Mark Borsi. We quietly discussed whether the accident might have been a terror attack. I was certain that it was not. Borsi agreed, saying that it would have been exceedingly difficult for a terrorist group to plant a bomb that could have survived launch and orbit and then be activated during the shuttle’s landing. The technical challenges of doing that were just too overwhelming.

  A few minutes later, the pilot invited me, as the ranking passenger on board, to take a more comfortable seat up front in the cockpit. I accepted his invitation, but later regretted it. I wish to God I had stayed down in the cold and noisy cargo hold with my people.

  A good leader should know better, I chided myself.

  I looked around and noticed that there was another empty seat. I asked that astronaut Jerry Ross join us in the cockpit. Jerry had been dragged through the depths of hell that day, losing his friends and then having the grim duty of telling their families that their loved ones had perished. Jerry would normally have flown back to Houston with the joyful families and the crew after a successful mission. Now, as the designated Flight Crew Operations member of the RRT, he had a very different task.

  I could only imagine what he must have been feeling.

  The C-141 taxied out to the runway and lifted off into the darkness. Eleven hours after the accident, the KSC team was finally underway.

  The people sitting in the cargo hold were still trying to come to grips with what was happening. Most of them had never been in a military plane before, and they were unprepared for the noise and cold. No one knew what to expect once they landed—or even exactly where Barksdale was.

  We landed at Barksdale Air Force Base at about 9:30 p.m. local time—now more than thirteen hours after the accident. Everyone seemed tired and confused. I overheard the pilot and copilot debating about where they should park the plane. Neither of them had ever been to Barksdale.

  Colonel McGuirk, the deputy base commander, met our plane and offered his support. “We’re going to stand up an ops center for you, with data lines and anything else you need.”

  McGuirk had one warning for us: “When you walk out toward the hangar, there’s a red line painted on the tarmac and the taxiways. If you walk across that red line, be forewarned that there’s a very high probability that you will be shot.”

  These guys meant business. The air force did not want anyone going near the B-52 bombers or their armament. For the civilians on the team, McGuirk’s admonition escalated the tension in what had already been a stressful day.

  We boarded air force buses to Shreveport’s commercial airport, where we rented cars. We then drove to hastily arranged rooms at two nearby motels.

  Accident Plus Fifteen Hours

  During the course of the afternoon, partial remains of some of Columbia’s crew members had been found along a fifteen-mile track from San Augustine County into Sabine County. The overall area in which the ship’s debris fell in Sabine County was twenty-six miles long, completely traversing the county and crossing the Toledo Bend Reservoir that lay along the Louisiana border. Using the debris sightings, the weather radar images he captured earlier in the day, and the location of three findings of crew remains that day, Greg Cohrs from the US Forest Service drew a line through the apparent centerline of the plotted points. It followed a track from west-northwest to east-southeast—from 298 degrees to 118 degrees.20 The Texas Forest Service generated a similar search line that evening for Nacogdoches County based on what their teams had tagged or collected in the field.21

  At 11:30 Central Time, Cohrs recommended that Sabine County crews conduct grid searches the next day on either side of the centerline he had plotted, starting at the places where crew remains had been located.

  Law enforcement officer Doug Hamilton hated calling off the searches for the night, knowing that there were still astronauts to be found. However, it was dark and cold, and everyone was exhausted. It was time to try to get a few hours of sleep. The incident command team agreed to convene before daybreak at Hemphill’s VFW hall.

  Accident Plus Sixteen Hours

  The Rapid Response Team leaders and I found our motel somewhere near Shreveport. I can’t recall with certainty where we were. We tossed our bags into our rooms and went back to the common area to plan for our meeting with Dave Whittle the next morning. We wrote down a few notes and started drafting procedures for workers in the field to deal with hazardous materials.

  By this point, people who had been running on adrenaline all day were burning out. At about one o’clock in the morning—seventeen hours after the accident—I told everyone to go to their rooms and get some sleep. We would reconvene in five hours.

  Exhausted from their long and dreadful day, everyone was appalled at the conditions in their motel rooms. Mark Borsi’s room was “beyond shabby.” He felt that if it were shown on TV, people would think that the condition was being overstated for dramatic effect. The bedsprings were broken, and the blanket had holes in it. Borsi was glad that he and the team were carrying weapons, because “we were in a nasty part of whatever town that was.”

  I went back to my room and flipped on the television out of habit, and there it was again—Columbia breaking up in the sky. All the day’s suppressed emotions finally poured to the surface. I had maintained a stoic facade all day for my team, as I was taught a leader should do. Now, in the privacy of my room, I lost it.

  Chapter 6

  ASSESSING THE SITUATION

  I met with the discipline leads on the Rapid Response Team in our Shreveport motel lobby for coffee at six o’clock on Sunday, February 2, and then we drove to Barksdale to meet the other initial responders and begin our work—whatever that might be.

  We hit a snag almost immediately. A guard denied us entrance at the Barksdale main gate because we lacked military identification. Jerry Ross, a retired air force colonel, showed his ID and requested that the guard talk to the appropriate officer, who quickly resolved the situation.

  I found Dave Whittle at Nose Dock 6, introduced myself, and offered the services of the Rapid Response Team. I said, “Dave, I report to you.” By grade level, I was the senior leader, but Whittle had the larger role as the chairman of the Mishap Investigation Team. My “paper” seniority was irrelevant. He appreciated my straightforward approach, and we got to work.

  Dave chaired the first Mishap Investigation Team meeting at eight o’clock. My management team and I wer
e there, as were Scott Wells from FEMA and Robert Benzon and Clint Crookshanks from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). NASA’s Dave King and Jim Wetherbee conferenced in from Lufkin. Representatives from Homeland Security, the FBI, the armed forces pathology team, and state emergency personnel from Texas and Louisiana also called in.

  Ralph Roe, head of NASA’s Orbiter Project Office, summarized the data received from Columbia just before communications were lost. Temperature sensors showed heat inside the left wing. A signal—possibly spurious—indicated that the left landing gear was down and locked. (The landing gear are not supposed to be extended until a few seconds before touchdown.) Then the wing sensors failed, and seconds later all communications were lost. These were the only indications of trouble. The NTSB representatives cautioned that everyone needed to keep a completely open mind during the investigation. They said that no one should form any opinions at this stage of the process, because it might cause people to discount evidence or miss potential areas for investigation.

  Dave King established three overarching priorities for the upcoming search-and-recovery operations. First was to protect public safety by finding and collecting hazardous debris. Whittle’s Mishap Investigation Team, supported by my Rapid Response Team, was responsible for this effort. Second was to locate and recover the remains of Columbia’s crew. Jim Wetherbee and the astronaut corps were NASA’s leaders for this task. Finally, searchers needed to find and recover data recording devices and sensitive communications equipment. These memory devices—cameras, computers, and “black boxes”—might contain information salient to the accident investigation. Everyone in the field would need to be alerted to look out for these items.

  The NTSB’s Bob Benzon, whose experience included the investigation of the Pan Am 103 terrorist bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988, estimated that no more than 10 percent of the shuttle would make it to the ground. He believed that generally only the densest components would survive reentry. There was no precedent for making a more accurate assessment. Nothing such as this had ever happened before.