While those listening in on the problems that started to be communicated on the Flight Loop at Mission Control, Johnson Space Center (JSC), were left with a sense of disbelief at the unfolding loss of NASA\u2019s flagship \u2013 those on the ground in East Texas would prove to be the first to find out. In remembrance of Columbia and her crew, lost four years ago, we recall the eye witness events of those involved in helping return the crew and the orbiter back home. A special video has also been produced for download.<\/p>\n
Witnesses recall hearing a harrowing rumble high in the sky \u2013 as Columbia\u2019s re-entry started to be dragged off course by the entry of super-hot gasses through a breach, caused by a piece of foam insulation striking the leading edge of her left wing on launch, burning into the cavity and tearing her apart without mercy.<\/p>\n
\u2018What in the hell was that?\u2019 \u2013 Jeff Millslagle, an FBI agent in East Texas, recalled saying via a phone call to his supervisor, after hearing the deep rumble high above him.<\/p>\n
Quickly realizing \u2013 via live TV pictures of Columbia\u2019s break-up \u2013 that a 230,000 pound spacecraft was reigning down on the State at 12,000 mph \u2013 Millslagle urgently phoned Washington, DC.<\/p>\n
\u2018Listen, we\u2019ve got an incident on our hands,\u2019 he said. \u2018We don\u2019t know the magnitude. We don\u2019t know injuries on the ground.\u201d You\u2019ve got what? Explain this to me slowly,\u2019 the Washington agent asked. \u2018What does this have to do with us?\u2019<\/p>\n
Agent Millslagle started phoning around his fellow agents, with four based in Lufkin heading to Nacogdoches, where people reporting debris were overloading the 911 system. Soon he was to come across a large crater.<\/p>\n
\u2018If this little piece did that much damage,\u2019 the agent recalled, \u2018what am I going to see on the ground? The buildings? The people? If that\u2019s just one little piece \u2013 I\u2019ve seen the shuttle take off. I know how big it is.\u2019<\/p>\n
It would later be revealed that had the main break up had started just one minute earlier, Columbia would have showered a suburban area of Dallas \u2013 with untold tragic circumstances for those on the ground. Amazingly, only an Eagle at Lake Nacogdoches was to be killed on the ground from the falling debris.<\/p>\n
\u2018Columbia\u2019s lasting memorial in my eyes was her bravery that often gets over-looked,\u2019 said a United Space Alliance worker who asked not to be named in this article. \u2018It was like she knew. I know that may sound strange \u2013 given she\u2019s a machine, but I can\u2019t \u2013 no matter how many times I look at the data \u2013 work out how she stayed mainly in one piece for so long, with her left wing terribly misshaped.<\/p>\n
\u2018Even with what we believe was \u2013 and I pray \u2013 an unconscious crew, and with her structure collapsing all around her, she still made multiple RCS (Reaction Control System) firings and rudder movements, fighting all the way to try and correct the drag. She should have been pulled over before she finally broke up, but she fought back, again and again.<\/p>\n
\u2018When I first got to see the data, I cried my eyes out. She was so brave to the end \u2013 I\u2019m so proud of her and I\u2019ll never forget her.\u2019<\/p>\n
The tragic human loss would soon be all too apparent, with the ultimate priority of finding and recovering the seven astronauts that perished.<\/p>\n
Special Agent Terry Lane received a call that a torso had been found by a State Trooper on a road outside Hemphill and had been covered with a raincoat. Lane was asked to help given his experience from being part of the FBI Evidence Team at Ground Zero after September 11.<\/p>\n
Lane heard an astronaut had driven up from Houston and insisted to go to the site of his fallen colleague. \u2018We don\u2019t want them going anywhere without us,\u2019 Lane recalled the un-named astronaut saying.<\/p>\n
As they waited silently for a Chaplin to arrive to say a prayer over the remains, word had gotten out to a News Helicopter of the find. Hovering just above the treetops for a closer shot, Lane and the Trooper swore furiously at the Media crew as they desperately held down the raincoat over the body.<\/p>\n
A call to the Federal Aviation Administration soon closed the region\u2019s airspace below 3,000 feet. Locals were also noted to be verbally attacking news crews that tried to overstep the mark.<\/p>\n
Lane recalled that this would prove to be just one of the examples of how the local communities around the debris path that would \u2013 without being asked \u2013 help bring Columbia and her crew back home to rest. Thousands of residents were volunteering to comb the field and woods, some taking sheets and blankets off their own beds to cover any human remains found, standing vigil over them for hours until the authorities arrived.<\/p>\n
The start of the organized search began the day after the loss of Columbia \u2013 and for the coming week\u2019s soldiers, police, foresters, volunteers, even NASA officials moved in arms-length lines. They crossed barbed-wire fences and overgrown fields \u2013 often waist-deep in mud, through deep forestry and over dangerous streams, sometimes in the rain, sleet and snow.<\/p>\n
Many people got ill during the search, passing out with dehydration, some losing vast amounts of weight and one National Guardsman collapsed from exhaustion and then begged, trembling, not to be sent home. \u2018We have to take her (Columbia) home, I can\u2019t leave her here,\u2019 said one NASA official at the time, after the crew had all been found.<\/p>\n
Individual stories of how people pulled together \u2013 ranged from one lady who decided that 200 searchers from the National Guard who slept in a Hemphill school gym needed fresh towels every day, so she did laundry. Schoolchildren made sandwiches, people cooked at all hours, even a poverty-struck old man brought in a pan of fried chicken \u2013 which was from his only hen.<\/p>\n
Another touching story was an old lady who baked a cake for the rescuers at Hemphill command post \u2013 hand decorated with an American flag and the names of the seven STS-107 astronauts. It was carefully sliced into 75 pieces by the lady \u2013 and was thanked by all in attendance, but no one touched it.<\/p>\n
Agent Millslagle explained: \u2018After about an hour, someone went up and covered it in cellophane. It sat there for days \u2013 out of respect for the astronauts.\u2019This is the right-stuff people, our best. These are ordinary folks who do extraordinary things.\u2019<\/p>\n
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