National Guard assists in search for shuttle debris
by Master Sgt. Bob Haskell
WASHINGTON (Army News Service, Feb. 6, 2003) -- National Guard airmen and soldiers joined the grim and painstaking search for debris from the ill-fated Space Shuttle Columbia soon after it disintegrated over Texas the morning of Feb. 1.
Two F-15 fighters from the Louisiana Air Guard's 159th Fighter Wing began an aerial search for wreckage over the vast region of eastern Texas and southwestern Louisiana after countless bits and pieces of the Columbia began raining on the countryside.
Next the Texas National Guard's 6th Civil Support Team, based in Austin, was told to go to east Texas to begin testing pieces of debris for hazardous residue.
Twenty-one members of that team tested, photographed and collected pieces of debris around four schools in Nacogdoches, Palestine and Naches so that classes could begin as planned on Monday morning, said Maj. Michael Dietz, the team's deputy commander.
Army Guard soldiers in both states spent the weekend helping state and local police officers guard pieces of the Columbia. The spacecraft broke apart 39 miles above Texas 16 minutes before it was scheduled to touch down at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida following a 16-day scientific mission.
All seven members of the crew, including five U.S. service members, an Israeli Air Force Colonel and a Karnal, India, native died.
In all, 184 members of the Texas National Guard were supporting the recovery mission by the afternoon of Feb. 2, said Lt. Col. John Stanford.
They included 96 Army Guard soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 133rd Field Artillery who were helping to guard debris sites in Nacogdoches and Lufkin. They also included members of a dozen UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter crews who were primed to fly a variety of missions for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas officials, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Stanford said.
A Texas Guard counter-drug airplane equipped with infrared sensors also joined the search for wreckage that included computer chips, fuel cells five feet in diameter, and "pieces of tile all over the place," one Guard officer explained.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency has been designated as the lead federal agency for search, find and secure efforts, officials said.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command first diverted two F-15s from the Air Guard fighter wing near New Orleans to look for debris.
"Our pilots spotted numerous debris locations and will provide further information only to FEMA and NASA officials," a spokesman said.
The first two fighters searched throughout the morning and were replaced by two other F-15s, said Dusty Shenofsky, spokesperson for the Louisiana National Guard.
Meanwhile, 24 Army Guard soldiers from Louisiana's 199th Support Battalion were helping to safeguard debris sites in that state by Sunday afternoon, said Shenofsky.
Debris had been located in 13 places within six Louisiana parishes, or counties, she added.
Finding the debris will take a lot of time and manpower, predicted Dietz, because it is scattered over some remote and rugged terrain.
"Nacogdoches is the urban epicenter for the debris, and that's where a lot of it has been located because people live there," Dietz reasoned.
Much of the area where debris has been reported, however, lies in the Piney Woods timber region of east Texas, which is rugged and densely wooded in places, a Texas newspaper reported.
Although it is a dirty job, surveying debris sites and testing the wreckage for toxic substances that could harm other emergency responders and the public is what the National Guard's civil support teams are designed to do.
The Texas team is getting help, Dietz said. The Guard team from Oklahoma arrived the evening of Feb. 2, and the team from Arkansas was expected to arrive on Feb. 3.
The Texas team was federally certified in August 2000, and this is the first time that the entire team has been tasked to perform its mission, explained Lt. Col. Brian Attaway, the team's commander.
"This has gone better than I ever would have expected," said Attaway about the fact that the first half dozen team members were on duty by 3:30 p.m., Feb. 1, following a five-hour drive from Austin and that 21 people and seven vehicles were in eastern Texas by 8 p.m. that night.
"This puts these civil support teams at the forefront of the federal response," Dietz observed. "It's taken four years of hard work to get to the tip of the spear."
Despite the magnitude of the situation, it is business as usual for members of the team, including operations Staff Sgt. Bradley Trefz, who has responded to considerably smaller incidents.
"This is no different for us, because we're dealing with the same people we always deal with," Trefz said. "It's just that now there's a lot more of them."
(Editor's note: Master Sgt. Bob Haskell is a member of the National Guard Bureau Public Affairs Office.)
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