VALLEY STUDENTS AID WITH SHUTTLE CREW ASSISTS HUNT FOR DEBRIS.

Byline: Jim Skeen Staff Writer

LANCASTER - Combing the swampy east Texas woods, students from Antelope Valley College found pieces of debris from the space shuttle Columbia - small pieces of a puzzle NASA is trying to put together to find out what went wrong.

The pieces found by the eight AVC students ranged in size from a 3-foot- long section of the right wing to fingernail-sized pieces of metal. They included computer chips, circuit boards and even test tubes, still intact, from Columbia's many experiments.

``It was sad,'' Bryan Leighty said of finding the pieces. ``But I know that we were helping find the cause.''

The firefighting course students and members of a fire crew that helps the U.S. Forest Service are part of an extraordinary recovery operation that thus far has cost more than $132 million, involved more than 10,000 people and scoured more than 1.7 million acres.

During their 18 days in Texas last month, the Antelope Valley team recovered more than 120 pieces of the shuttle. Overall, more than 42,000 pieces of shuttle debris have been found.

Participating in the search from the Antelope Valley were Leighty, Jonathan Irula, Michael Norris, Brandon Beeler, Brian Grijalva, Brett Chapman, Chris Prime, and Adam Norton.

Operating out of a command center set up in Hemphill, a community about 200 miles southeast of Dallas, the crew covered about 8 acres per person a day.

``After awhile you get tired, but we kept pushing it,'' Chapman said. ``You tell yourself we're dealing with a piece of history here. It's something to tell the grandkids.''

During their time on the search, the weather was hot and humid, and there were tornado warnings. They lived in tents and ate from a catering truck, the same way wildfire crews are fed.

The area they covered was forested and covered with briars, thorny vines and an occasional swamp. The crew encountered several snakes, including water moccasins, a poisonous species.

``I thought we were going to be walking in meadows,'' Irula said. ``We were going through briars and buckthorns.''

Partnered with a crew from Los Angeles Valley College, the searchers lined up about 15 feet apart and kept their spacing even as they walked. If a suspected shuttle piece was found, the searcher yelled out ``part'' and a representative from either the Environmental Protection Agency or NASA would come to record the position of the piece and to collect it.

``The first couple of days found two or three pieces,'' Norris said. ``One day we found 87 pieces.''

Some days, the crew went over areas that had been searched before and they still recovered parts.

``I feel like it was a big contribution to the investigation,'' Irula said. ``I'm very proud of what the team did.''

More than 140 20-person teams are still involved in the ground searches in Texas.

CAPTION(S):

Photo:

(1) Students from Antelope Valley College and Los Angeles Val ley College line up before starting a search for Columbia debris near Hemphill, Texas.

(2) Antelope Valley College student Brett Chapman takes a break from combing for shuttle pieces.

Brett Chapman/Special to the Daily News