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Shuttle searchers slosh through Texas
HEMPHILL, Texas (CNN) -- Two hundred members of the National Guard braved a steady downpour on a bone-chilling Thursday to comb Sabine County's rugged East Texas terrain for debris from the space shuttle Columbia. But the weather was so bad that about 500 other searchers were told to suspend their operations until the skies cleared. "These conditions, it goes without saying, will impede and hamper our efforts today," said U.S. Forest Service spokesman Marq Webb. Morning temperatures in the 30s were not expected to rise much above 50 during the day. Before the major part of the effort was suspended, searchers included 15 ground crews numbering 350 people, a crew of 14 people on horseback, members of the National Guard, the FBI, the Louisiana State Police and a number off-duty NASA workers. A number of volunteers joined the representatives of some 50 federal, state and local agencies. "Those people are here for one sole reason, and that's to recover what's there," Webb said. The 200 members of the National Guard arrived Thursday afternoon to help scour the 250-square-mile county. Coffee cup to landing gearA Forest Service spokeswoman said Thursday's finds included a coffee container thought to have been used by a shuttle crewmember. Approximately 625 items of debris have been found in the county -- more than 200 of them Wednesday, said Jamie Gunter, operations chief. "We anticipate there will be that many, if not more, today," he said before the weather forced the search cutback. Among Wednesday's finds were human remains -- the searchers' primary goal -- and shuttle rockets, shuttle windows, landing gear and a switchboard, he said. The debris ranged in size from "minute" to 15 or 20 feet in length, he said. The shuttle's nose cone, which was found Monday in a remote, wooded area, was hauled away by truck to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. Murky, choppy waters slowed efforts to retrieve a 40-foot object that could be part of the shuttle from the Toledo Bend Reservoir. Witnesses reported seeing a chunk the size of a car fall into the reservoir, which straddles Texas and Louisiana. "They can see it from the air, and by the time they get there, it's gone," said Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox. "It's just a nightmare -- you can't see in front of your face." Thursday afternoon, divers prepared to re-enter the reservoir. In Hemphill, businesses posted signs saying they were praying for the seven astronauts. Some residents opened their homes to searchers, allowing them to spend the night. Once a piece of suspected shuttle debris is located, searchers describe it and use a global positioning system device to note its coordinates. NASA workers then determine if it is shuttle debris. Two people were arrested Wednesday for taking shuttle debris. An amnesty, in place until 5 p.m. Friday, has been set up to encourage anyone else who may have taken debris to hand it over to authorities. Ron Dittemore, shuttle program manager for NASA, said Wednesday they have not found any "red-tag" pieces of debris that would be highly important in the shuttle investigation, such as pieces of the left wing, tile, and voice or data recorders. Key scrap could be in WestIn the southeastern California city of Joshua Tree, a resident found a 4-inch square piece of silver-colored material with a square hole burned in its center. If it turns out to be part of the shuttle, it would be the first piece found west of the main debris field in eastern Texas and western Louisiana. Its location is considered critical, because if it is from the shuttle it would be one of the first pieces to have come off. That could give investigators an idea about what failed first and led the orbiter to disintegrate on its trajectory toward the planned landing site at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
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