Nacogdoches Newspaper Confirms Remains Found

An East Texas high school was turned into a morgue as authorities collected the remains of astronauts from the doomed space shuttle Columbia.

Authorities said remains were being collected in an area between Hemphill and Jasper and taken to Hemphill High School. A local funeral home was assisting officials from the FBI and Defense Department in the grisly work.

One official said investigators were using a global positioning system to record where the remains were being found.

The remains — which included an arm and a hand found near Chinquipin — were part of the debris scattered across East Texas after the shuttle broke apart Saturday as it made its way towards a landing in Florida.

A flight helmet landed on James Couch's property near state Highway 103 and F.M. 1751 in San Augustine County. Couch kept guard over the helmet by setting up camp five feet away.

Couch said he and his family were eating breakfast when he heard something — it turned out to be a piece of pipe — hit the roof of his house.

"It didn't really scare me," Couch said. "A lot of people around here dynamite stumps on the weekend ... and the phone started to ring and my daughter from Pineland told me what happened."

Mica Miller was working on some equipment at his farm near Etoile when he heard some rumbling and noticed swirls of smoke in the sky. About two minutes later, he heard a swishing sound and saw that a large piece of debris had landed on a flatbed trailer 30 feet away.

"I'm devastated to see the aftermath of what just happened," Miller said.

Didn't want to start a new thread so I posted this here. It's from the Houston Chronical via Drudge.

***WARNING - VERY GRAPHIC!

Men report finding possible shuttle victim's remains

Associated Press

HEMPHILL -- Among the chunks of metal littered across eastern Texas following the space shuttle's explosion were some heartbreaking discoveries: an astronaut's charred patch, a helmet, some human remains.

The shuttle Columbia broke apart in flames 200,000 feet over Texas this morning, leaving a 500-mile swath of debris across several counties. All seven astronauts were killed just minutes before they were to glide to a landing in Florida.

Clark Barnett, 32, spotted an object while driving on Farm-to-Market Road 2971 this morning. He didn't give it much thought until he got a call from friend Mike Gibbs, an X-ray technician at Sabine County Hospital, who told him about the shuttle explosion.

Both men met on the two-lane road about 9 a.m. and realized with horror that they apparently were looking at an astronaut's remains: a charred torso, thigh bone and skull with front teeth intact.

"I wouldn't want anybody seeing what I saw," Gibbs, 33, told The Associated Press. "It was pretty gruesome."

Fire trucks arrived shortly and blocked the road as authorities collected evidence. A hearse was seen leaving the area today evening after officials loaded it with a black bag.

Billy Smith, the emergency management coordinator for Jasper, Sabine and Newton counties, confirmed that body parts were found near apparent shuttle debris in Sabine County.

The remains have been turned over to the FBI, officials said.

"We don't know where the remains are being taken," Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox said.

Residents across eastern Texas reported finding chunks of metal and other shuttle parts atop roofs, in yards and on parking lots. A compact car-size piece of debris fell into Toledo Bend lake, said Maddox. A charred astronaut's patch was found in San Augustine County.

A flight helmet landed on James Couch's property near state Highway 103 and F.M. 1751 in San Augustine County, The Lufkin Daily News reported. He kept guard on the helmet.

Authorities were searching a 500-mile swath but said the debris could be spread over a region three times larger.

Here's an update from the Nacogdoches Sun-Sentinel:

By CHRISTINE S. DIAMOND, Cox East Texas
Feb. 2 - HEMPHILL -- FBI agents Saturday were refrigerating human remains from the crew aboard the space shuttle Columbia that were found in Deep East Texas and sending them to the area's only medical examiner in Lufkin, Sabine County officials said.

Except for one account of three young boys who had found a body part while on a four-wheeler, neither Sabine County Sheriff Tom Maddox nor Emergency Management Coordinator Billy Smith would confirm or deny the many reports springing up of human remains. Only a small portion of the 100 or so sites known to have verified Columbia debris were human remnants, Smith said. And most of these sites were in the Sabine and San Augustine counties, they said.

Maddox late Saturday said that a piece of debris “about the size of a compact car” was found submerged in Toledo Bend Reservoir. The debris had not been recovered, but its coordinates had been determined through sonar.

When asked if a flight recorder had been recovered, as rumored earlier in the evening, the sheriff would not confirm or deny the report.

“We have things that we don’t know what they are,” he told reporters.

Just across the street from the Hemphill Fire Department, where recovery headquarters were based, officials guarded the entry of Lilian Street. Smith and Maddox said there was debris at the end of the rooad and all further information on human remnants was classified.

Starr Funeral Home of Hemphill took several of these remains to medical examiner Dr. James Bruce's office in Lufkin. Bruce is the only medical examiner in the area, Maddox explained. A motorcade of 15 cars and refrigerated vehicles was headed east on state Hwy. 103 Saturday evening.

All other debris is going to an undisclosed location in Hemphill, Smith said.

"Only the FBI is handling the debris. This is considered hazardous material and we are not handling it," Maddox said.

FBI Agent-in-charge Glenn Martin at the Chinquapin Community command center in San Augustine said debris and its remnants were being marked with GPS coordinates, he said.

NASA Astronaut Greg Johnson, who first landed in Nacogdoches, arrived at Hemphill High School football field late Saturday afternoon.

Johnson stopped to look at a {M4Lufkin Daily News picture of a massive ball, with yellow peeling material on it, found in San Augustine. He was uncertain, he said, but the ball could be one of the shuttle's many cylinders.

The ball was found in 83-year-old Ray Thompson's field in the Norwood Community off of Hwy. 103.

"I heard the rumbling," Melinda Smith, one of the first to see the large ball, said. The family was about to leave for a basketball game, and she decided to stay and watch the news.

Calling the Columbia's fate, "terrible,"a group jumped into their trucks to go check out reports of possible body parts at Manuel R. Steptoe's Tyson chicken farm. Police had already cordoned off the entrance to the property where a large piece of metal was discovered behind Steptoe's barn.

Piling into their vehicles to continue down the road, the group changed its course when they learned the next-door neighbors had found a helmet in their field.

"There are no additional helmets on board; they (the astronauts) would be wearing their helmets," NASA Astonaut Greg Johnson said of the find.

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