Residents in Texas, Louisiana Report Seeing Blast
Saturday, February 01, 2003
Residents across Texas and parts of Louisiana reported seeing and hearing the catastrophic explosions of the ill-fated space shuttle Columbia Saturday morning.
In the east Texas town of Nacogdoches, 135 miles northeast of Houston, residents said bits of machinery and pieces of metal were found strewn across the town, hours after NASA lost contact with the spacecraft.
"It's all over Nacogdoches," said James Milford, owner of Milford Barber shop in downtown Nacogdoches. "There are several little pieces, some parts of machinery ... there's been a lot of pieces about 3 feet wide."
NASA declared an emergency after losing communication with Columbia as the ship soared across Texas at an altitude of about 200,000 feet while traveling at six times the speed of sound.
In North Texas, residents said they saw flames and heard a window-rattling boom Saturday about the time Columbia apparently disintegrated on its way to a scheduled landing at Cape Canaveral.
"It was like a car hitting the house or an explosion. It shook that much," said John Ferolito, 60, of Carrollton, north of Dallas.
Gary Hunziker in Plano said he saw the shuttle flying overhead.
"I could see two bright objects flying off each side of it," he told The Associated Press. "I just assumed they were chase jets."
"I was getting read to go out, and I heard a big bang and the windows shook in the house," Ferolito told The AP. "I was getting ready to go out and I heard a big bang and the windows shook in the house. I thought it was a sonic boom."
In Louisiana, state police in Bossier City, 182 miles east of Dallas, got so many calls that one trooper had to be assigned just to answer the phone.
"One said he saw a plane breaking up over Shreveport. One said he saw a big ball of fire. One guy said his house had a blast that shook his house," state police Sgt. Steve Robinson said. That call was from DeSoto Parish, south of the parish where Bossier City is located.
North of Dallas, Chris Linville stopped working at Brookhaven Pet Hospital in Addison to go outside and watch the shuttle pass overhead.
"From the viewpoint we had, we did see some flames. We thought maybe it was from the engines or something we didn't know," said Linville, 21. "We knew it was flying over, and we were actually looking for the shuttle passing by. We had no idea."
Nacogdoches enacted its emergency operations center and was sending emergency crews to the reported debris, he said.
"At this point we're just trying to get it out to the public to not touch or tamper with this debris in any manner due to the possibility of toxic substances being on the debris," Nacogdoches police spokesman Greg Sowell said.
Jeff Hancock, a 29-year-old dentist, said he found a chunk of debris in his office.
"There's actually a piece in my office. It came through the roof of my office. It's about a foot long metal bracket," he said.
Ed Rohner, Nacogdoches airport manager, said some type of tank ended up on a runway.
"We have one large, several foot in diameter, some type of tank that was in the middle of a runway. We've got pieces of debris all along the entrance road to the airport," Rohner said.
"I don't know what it is. It's a large, round metal tank, several feet in diameter."
Members of the National Guard were on hand to protect the debris.
R.T. Gregory, a waiter at Aubrey's Cafe in Nacogdoches said he and about 50 other people gathered around a taped-off piece of metal debris in the parking lot of the Commercial Bank of Texas around 9:20 a.m. He said the debris was about 4 feet long and 4 feet wide.
There also were confirmed reports of debris in Cherokee and Rusk County in East Texas, Department of Public Safety dispatcher Natalie Gordon said.
In Lufkin, there were no confirmed repots, but officers were fanning out to verify numerous reports. "We have way too many to verify," DPS supervisor Michelle McLean said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
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