Nacogdoches, Texas (REUTERS) — Searchers scouring the vast debris field scattered across Texas by the Columbia shuttle disaster have found pieces from the cockpit and remains of the astronauts who perished, officials said Sunday.
“We are treating those remains with the ultimate respect and care that they deserve,” Bob Cabana, director of flight-crew operations, told a news conference at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. “We’re honoring our fellow crewmates, and we’re taking care of them.”
Cabana initially said remains from all seven astronauts had been found, but NASA later issued a statement saying this had not been confirmed. “Cabana … was misinformed about that subject,” the statement said.
Hundreds of law-enforcement officials and soldiers, some on horseback and in helicopters, fanned out across an area dubbed the “debris belt” Sunday as the National Guard, firefighters and police guarded pieces of the shuttle that rained down when Columbia broke up over Texas Saturday, just 16 minutes before it was to land in Florida.
The main search area was about 100 miles to 120 miles long and about 10 miles wide, stretching from Palestine, Texas to the small east-Texas town of Hemphill, near the Louisiana border.
Columbia disintegrated high above the Texas plains almost 17 years to the day of the explosion that destroyed the space shuttle Challenger Jan. 28, 1986, also killing the six astronauts and one teacher on board.
Recovery crews combed heavily wooded terrain and swamps in the areas around San Augustine and Hemphill for the remains of the Columbia crew, which included the first Indian-born woman and Israeli to travel in space.
Local officials said debris was found in nearly 2,000 sites, including some 1,200 places in Nacogdoches County. Federal and state officials said one of their top priorities was to remove debris from about 100 schools in the five Texas counties where the bulk of the shuttle’s pieces came down.
There was concern that some pieces could be tainted with radioactive material or toxic chemicals, posing a particular hazard to children from objects that landed in schoolyards.
Local officials said they could not comment on the search for remains, but several people attached to the search said a makeshift morgue had been set up at a school in Hemphill.
Nacogdoches County Sheriff Thomas Kerss said debris from the cockpit apparently fell on his county and neighboring areas to the east.
“There have been some remains of the shuttle that do indicate that they are cabinet components,” he said, adding his office had been deluged with calls reporting debris.
“The site locations are coming in faster than we can deploy personnel to those sites,” Kerss said at a press conference.
Local police and volunteers were guarding the debris, waiting for instructions from federal agencies.
Pieces of Columbia found in Nacogdoches County ranged in size from a postage stamp to the bed of a pickup truck. Some were large chunks of twisted metal, tile-like fragments and items such as an almost-intact spherical tank found at the city’s airport that may have been part of the fuel system.
A massive search was underway at Toledo Bend reservoir, where local fishermen reported seeing a large, metallic piece of the shuttle, about the size of a compact car, fall into the water, said Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox.
Kerss said recovered items were photographed, secured and marked by global-positioning satellites.
Debris has been found in a parking lot in the heart of Nacogdoches and in open pasture land where cattle and mules graze, as well as in forested areas.
Several people stopped by an isolated site along state highway 103 near San Augustine, where an astronaut’s seat harness was lying on the side of the road.
“It sends chills up your spine to know there was a person in front of it,” said Efren Vivar of Conroe, Texas.
