Instapundit Extra!

February 03, 2003

FIRSTHAND REPORTING? Here's an interesting, though unconfirmed, story from reader Tim Kramer:

My main hobby is flying. I own a Viet Nam era observation airplane (a Cessna O-2A that is still in Air Force paint scheme) and am also partners with two other gentlemen in a Cessna 210 (holds six and goes fast). My brother is an airplane mechanic in Nacogdoches Texas and one of my partners is the director for the NASA Center for Space Commercialization (you can probably see where this is going).

My brother happens to be a Cessna 210 expert and has our plane in his shop. My partner and I had planned on an early Saturday breakfast in College Station and then fly up to Nacogdoches to visit my brother. We drove separately to the airport and on arrival my partner indicated that he had heard that there was some problem with the space shuttle and he need to stay by the phone. So off I went alone. I didn't have my watch with me, but I am guessing that I was in the air a bit before 9:00 am CST. The sky was as clear as it could get and I had a nice tail wind out of the southwest. Winds on the ground were straight out of the south at about 10 knots. As I knew that there was a problem with space shuttle I was monitoring an AM radio listening for news and heard some mention of Palestine Texas not far from Nacogdoches. About 25 miles out of Nacogdoches I contacted the FAA and was told that they new of nothing that would keep me from getting into the airport. There was a pipeline patrol aircraft in the area and he didn't say anything of the event either.

I was traveling on a 50 degree heading and at an altitude of 3500 feet, just about at a 90 degree angle from the debris track. Looking east there appeared to be what looked like a plume of smoke that was being blown from east to west. I didn't think about it at the time but the wind was blowing southwest to
northeast. Obviously the plume was latten debris that was still in the air being carried by the wind.

There is a lake on the west side of the Nacogdoches airport which I passed just south of. The surrounding area is a combination of open fields and commercial forest lands that are densely planted with pine trees. On the occasion that the forest are harvested it is not uncommon to see fires of remaining stumps and branches being burned.

There were fires in the area, but not an unusual amount given the forest practices. There was an aircraft landing ahead of me that turned out to be a state airplane (another Cessna 210 actually). I landed about 2 or 3 minutes behind him. Now you have to picture this, I am arriving in an Air Force observation aircraft, there has been a major disaster involving the space shuttle, and my other partner had called the airport to see if we were OK and the phrase NASA came up. So I park and get out, a group of people run up to me to ask if I am the guy from NASA. They then take me to a hangar and show me this large tank (photo attached) which evidently landed on the runway not to long before I landed (lucky me, I would have hated to run into it). By now it's about 9:30, or so, and it is apparent that the shuttle debris has landed on parts of Nacogdoches.

My brother comes around the corner and explains what had happened. Sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 there was a violent shaking and then a loud boom (probably some big piece traveling over head at greater than the speed of sound). Then it began raining airplane parts. He came across several items including a section of tire that landed across the road. Some state troopers came by and pulled the tire segment off the road. Also, someone had called the FAA to tell them about the tank that landed on the runway. I guess the news media got a hold of the tank news and the story was out about shuttle parts landing on the runway. The police closed access to the airport and soon you could see cars gathering around the perimeter. Not long after the police closed the airport, two F-15's flew over very slowly (news reports say F-16's trust me they were F-15's). The airplanes were followed by a flock of helicopters from every news agency within a 200 mile radius, about a dozen. This all occurred at about 10:00 am. The helicopters landed and took on fuel. The guy in the state airplane took a state police officer up for a look and came back about an hour later.

A Coast Guard helicopter arrived and stayed on the ground until after noon and I believe they went back to where ever they were from. None of us who were flying could see much from the air, there just wasn't anything that left a huge smoking hole. The news choppers were just out to get feed for the talking heads back in the newsroom. For the most part we all stood there wondering what we should do and quite honestly there wasn't much to do. The local and state police were the only ones I saw on the scene other than the two fighter planes and the Coast Guard guys.

There were many local volunteers who were helping keep people away from the debris. There was some stuff on the news about people hoarding the debris to sell on e-bay, but I didn't see any of this, nor did I hear about any. It is my feeling that everyone behaved quite well and it was amazing that no one was hurt.

This is an interesting story. Tim's timeline seems a bit out of sync with my understanding of when things took place, and the remark about his brother hearing in advance that there was a problem seems odd, too. I've emailed him to ask about those. And, of course, this is unconfirmed email, and so can't be treated as entirely reliable. But it's interesting enough I thought I'd post it here.

UPDATE: Kramer emails:

My partner (the one who works for NASA) knew that something was wrong with the shuttle. Most of the people I talked to when I got to Nacogdoches had figured out what happened. The times I wrote are CST, and keep in mind that there was a lag between the break up and when pieces actually hit the ground. I got there sometime between 9:00 and 9:30 which was after when most of the debris fell, but before the arrival of any state and federal people. I think the interesting part that I saw was how the pieces impacted vertically. Watching the never ending video you get the impression of a comet impacting the ground and sliding for miles. It looked to me like the pieces landed at a reasonable velocity and this did not do much damage or hurt anybody. Hope that this is helpful.

It is.

posted at 11:31 PM by Glenn Reynolds