As residents find debris, officials seek clues

By Tatsha Robertson, Globe Staff and Wayne Epperson, Globe Correspondent, 2/2/2003

ACOGDOCHES, Texas - Debris from the space shuttle Columbia fell yesterday across a swath of East Texas, showering sheets of metal and bits of circuit board and tile from just outside Dallas to this city near the Louisiana border.

State, local, and federal authorities spread out across the area to gather the pieces as they were found, hoping they would yield clues to what had brought the craft down.

Several buildings were hit, but there were no reports of injuries from the debris. Residents were warned that some pieces of the shuttle could be toxic.

Bill Iversen, a 39-year-old air traffic controller who was visiting Nacogdoches from his native Norway, heard the roar of the disintegrating shuttle and rushed into town, where he saw several large pieces of metal and foam in the streets.

Iversen said that he had come upon people who were crying over the realization of what had occurred and that he was ''very bothered by the objects, because I knew people had died.''

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A Nacogdoches County judge, Sue Kennedy, who is also the county's emergency management coordinator, said that more than 500 fragments - some as small as a pebble, some as big as the hood of a car - had been reported within the county.

In Alto, near the town of Nacogdoches, residents said they were growing used to the sound of sirens, and the sight of the two big white trucks moving through town, pulling trailers filled with the debris.

National Guard troops and volunteers from numerous agencies were helping in the search, cataloging the debris and reporting back to a command post in Nacogdoches, where NASA staff was waiting to inspect fragments. F-16s flew over the region to photograph debris fields.

Billy Ray Smith, 47, of Nacogdoches, was among 200 people in a bank parking lot near the center of town late in the day who silently looked at a section of the shuttle's charred skin. Nearby, the US and Texas flags flew at half-staff.

''I heard an explosion. I was near a railroad track and thought there had been a wreck in the train yards,'' Smith said. ''But then I looked up and saw debris passing over the city.''

In Palestine, about an hour to the West, more than 30 pieces of debris were found. One, 4 feet long, landed in the median of Route 155.

Anna Williams of Palestine stopped with her two young children at a spot where a score of people had gathered to try to glimpse the debris beyond police tape.

''It's a really sad day,'' Williams said. ''You can't help but wonder what was going through their heads at the last moment.''

Palestine's police chief, Mike Medders, said something that ''looked like some sort of piece off of a cooling device'' appeared to have landed in the center of the town.

''We found debris on roadsides and pastures, on the sides of city streets,'' said Carey McKinney, an Anderson County Judge. ''And we're still fielding hundreds of calls.''

Anderson City Sheriff Deputy Brian Chason said he spent his entire morning chasing reports of debris. ''I've never had to deal with anything like this,'' he said. ''We've been chasing stuff everywhere.''

Using information from NASA, medical personnel set up a decontamination area behind a Palestine medical center. At least 25 people went to the hospital as a precaution. All underwent decontamination procedures because they had come into contact with debris. Authorities asked residents to stay 50 yards away.

Although most of the shuttle's remains was reported in East Texas, authorities were investigating reports of debris found as far west as Arlington, just outside Dallas.

James McAdams, 64, said he heard a strange noise and thought something hit his house. Then he found an object in his yard when he went to get his newspaper.

''It's a baseball-size piece of something, '' he said. ''It looks sort of glassy-like. It's a broken-up piece of whatever it is - purple on one side and it looks burned on one side.''

Heeding warnings that fuels aboard the shuttle could make some of the debris toxic, he called 911, and police and FBI officials came to assess the object. ''I thought it's better to be safe than sorry and to let them know about it,'' he said.

This story ran on page A17 of the Boston Globe on 2/2/2003.
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