The day the Columbia Space Shuttle disintegrated upon reentry over Texas will be long remembered, particularly by USDA employees caught up in the horrific search for human remains and the Shuttle itself. Like the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and more recently the events of September 11, February 1, 2003 has etched itself into the minds of Americans. Most of us will be able to recount where we were and what we were doing when the fate of Columbia was realized.

With that in mind, shortly after the disaster, employees of more than 74 federal and state agencies throughout the United States, as well as volunteers, descended upon eastern Texas and northwestern Louisiana, searching its waters, swamps, piney woods, and remote countryside to assist in the effort to search for and recover shuttle debris and human remains. USDA employees played a key role in that effort.

Alan Harvey (left), a program technician with the FSA county office in Milam County, Texas, and Darvin Collins (center), FSA county executive director for Houston County, Texas, trudge through thick underbrush in Nacogdoches County, Texas. They were two of the many volunteers searching for debris from the Columbia space shuttle. That particular piece of geography is typical of the rugged terrain with which search steams had to cope. USDA employees played a key role in the debris recovery efforts. - -Photo by Brenda Carlson

A number of USDA employees offered their expertise in using Global Positioning System (GPS) technology, as part of the recovery efforts in the approximately 33,000-square mile debris field. According to Alan Harvey, a Farm Service Agency program technician in the county office in Milam County, Texas, GPS technology allows the user to hone in on a particular geographical area with great precision.

“As searchers located shuttle debris,” he explained, “we used GPS to log the coordinates of those location sites. This enabled law enforcement and NASA recovery teams to pinpoint the exact location of the wreckage for collection.”

Harvey added that, when mapped collectively, those coordinates paint a picture of the flight path and debris field--and will eventually help National Aeronautics and Space Administration specialists to decipher the chain of events of the shuttle disaster, as it unfolded over the continental United States.

“Because debris sites are ‘geo-referenced’,” noted Bryan Crook, a GPS specialist with FSA’s state office in College Station, Texas, “we’ve been technologically interacting with all agencies involved in this activity. This has made for a more efficient search and recovery effort.”

He pointed out that FSA normally uses GPS to map cropland and ranchland, thereby providing agricultural producers with accurate field measurements.

“Our GPS equipment will let us cut through all this terrain--figuratively speaking--and exactly pinpoint shuttle debris sites,” affirms FSA GPS specialist Bryan Crook (kneeling, wearing GPS backpack). He, along with Darvin Collins (left, back to camera), FSA county executive director for Houston County, Texas, and John Raney (far right), FSA county executive director for Cherokee County, Texas, are working with local Texas law enforcement officials to plot a strategy for searching for and recovering shuttle debris in Nacogdoches County, Texas. --Photo by Brenda Carlson

Crook led a team of four FSA employees certified to use GPS technology. Prior to joining the search and recovery effort, he worked behind the scenes at USDA service centers located within the search area to set up computer mapping programs.

Valerie Cardwell, a Natural Resources Conservation Service district conservationist at USDA’s San Augustine, Texas service center, and Debra Hamilton, an FSA program technician at that same location, coordinated with Crook at that service center. “Those computer mapping programs,” Cardwell explained, “have been allowing searchers to call in debris coordinates to the FSA office--within the appropriate USDA service center--to identify the owners and/or operators of the land on which debris has been found. Appropriate officials then follow up to get permission to enter that land and then pick up the shuttle debris.”

Holly Morgan, a timber management assistant on the Forest Service’s Catahoula Ranger District in Bentley, La., noted that debris from the space shuttle fell, in part, on the National Forests and Grasslands in Texas and the Kisatchie National Forest in Louisiana. She said that FS personnel were on the scene at the beginning, organizing local volunteers to begin the search and recovery efforts. FS then ultimately committed literally thousands of agency personnel to the recovery efforts, generally organized in teams and crews.

“Our Forest Service crews are trained to fight wildland fires in national forests and other lands, and are used to working under harsh conditions,” she noted. “They’ve been welcomed as replacements to the local police, firefighters, and other volunteers--who have been performing so exceptionally under adverse conditions in the thick undergrowth and swampy waters that are part of the recovery area.”

Secretary Ann M. Veneman, noting that this quick responsiveness by FS employees is similar to their timeliness onsite at the World Trade Center in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, said, “These are the kind of responses that we see from the training that our people in the Forest Service have.”

George Custer, FS incident commander of the interagency Blue Team, who is based on the Ocala National Forest in central Florida, explained that, as one aspect of its assistance, FS personnel set up incident command posts and employed search grids to systematically, meticulously, and efficiently search territory for debris. “We’re on the ground, walking in close formation, looking for Columbia material,” he said. In addition, FS has helicopters on site providing aerial reconnaissance of open areas.

“Our camps have been established with caterers, showers, and a commissary,” said Terry Stolz, acting branch chief for disaster and emergency operations in FS’s Fire and Aviation Management. “Crews have faced wet and cold conditions--but they’ve received visits from several astronauts, which is helping to keep morale up.”

Frank Beum, a district ranger based with the New Castle Ranger District on the George Washington-Jefferson National Forests in western Virginia, added that NASA had asked area farmers and ranchers to be on the lookout, during their spring plowing, for anything that may have fallen from the sky on Feb. 1. “Ground foliage will be sprouting eventually, of course,” he observed, “and that’ll make it that much harder to notice shuttle debris on the ground.”

Steve Weaver, FS’s operations section chief for the interagency Red Team, who is based in the agency’s Southern Regional Office in Atlanta, emphasized the role played by concerned local citizens as they have stepped up to help with the recovery efforts. In particular, Weaver referred to the eastern Texas community of Hemphill, where local volunteers from that town of 1,100 provided hearty meals daily for the 2,000-plus search and recovery workers in that local area.

Grace Sheffey, disaster coordinator for the Food and Nutrition Service, said that FNS provided surplus agricultural commodities to Salvation Army workers in several counties in Texas to feed persons involved in the recovery efforts. “Otherwise,” she pointed out, “those workers in remote areas wouldn’t have had access to suitable nourishment during the recovery efforts--because commercial eating establishments were simply too far away to be useful.”

“Our residents have really come together over this event,” noted Lloyd Ford, FSA county executive director for Polk County, Texas and a resident of Hemphill. He said that participating in a mission like this--for both USDA employees and others--“will have a positive, long-lasting effect on our community.” •