Greg Cohrs takes reins on Kisatchie By James Ronald Skains Greg Cohrs, am Oklahoma native, was appointed as Winn District Ranger on the Kisatchie National Forest, succeeding the recently retired Frank Yerby. Cohrs is no stranger to "Incident Command Centers." Cohrs set up the first Incident Command Center for the retrieval of the Columbia Space ship that came down in the Sabine National Forest in East Texas. "That Saturday morning in 2003, I was woken up by a series of extremely loud booms and the windows in the house shaking," Greg Cohrs, a native of Bethany, Oklahoma told the Piney Woods Journal. "It seemed like the explosions and window rattling went on for three or four minutes but I think the noise only lasted for a couple of minutes." "My first thought was that the terrorists had set off a nuclear blast in either Houston or New Orleans,'' said Cohrs, who spent twenty-one years on National Forests in East Texas. "My wife turned on the TV and as soon as I saw the trajectory path of the Columbia, I told my wife that I'd that bet we get involved in the search for the wreckage," Cohrs recalled. "A few minutes later, my boss called and said that we were on standby." "Not long afterwards, he called again and told me to come in and get up in a helicopter and begin to search for wreckage." said Cohrs "By the time I got into the office, NASA had closed the air space in East Texas so the helicopter went back to Lufkin." "I was then instructed to set up our Incident Command Center on the Sabine (National Forest)," Cohrs noted. "We then began to use GPS systems to try and determine the flight path of the Columbia through East Texas." "I remember drawing on maps the first search lines across the Sabine," said Cohrs. "At first, no one thought we would recover much of the orbiter but we were ultimately in 81 days able to recover about 40% of the space ship." "The search area involved some 600,000 acres," Cohrs said. "One of the amazing things was the number of volunteers. There were upwards of 50,000 meals served by volunteers during the search." The explosion and ensuing search for the wreckage of the Columbia was the second major disaster for Cohrs on the Sabine. In 1998, a storm front with micro burst high winds came through and blew down some 103,000 of Forest Service timber. "It only took twenty minutes for the storm to move through the Sabine but it took us eleven months to get it cleaned up, and then we only were able to salvage about 25% of the timber," he said. "It took us 440,000 man hours to salvage 27,000 acres out of the 103,000 acres in the blow down. Usually we had from 250 to 350 people working on the project at anyone given time" said Cohrs, who was Chief Operations Manager on the salvage operation pointed out. "It took us a week to get all the rural roads open. There were several families trapped in their homes for three or four days until we could cut their roads open." "During our 11 month salvage operation, we also suffered through a severe drought. One major fire got into one of the blow down areas but it wasn't as bad as we first thought it was going to be." Seven years after the "Big Blow Down" and two years after the Columbia episode, Cohrs was right in the middle of another major National Forest emergency when Hurricane Rita roared through southeast Texas. "The timber salvage operation from Rita was only about half the size of the Big Blow Down but it was still a major challenge," Cohrs noted. "Again, we were able to salvage more timber than we originally estimated that we would be able to." Cohrs, who met his wife Sandra in Mena, Arkansas while serving on the Ouachita has been fighting major forest fires in the western states since the early 1980's. Cohrs has been involved in fighting more than 30 major fires both on the west coast and east coast in the last twenty plus years. On one major fire, Cohrs' assignment was to train elements of the 3rd Battalion, 11th Field Artillery military units on the science of fire fighting. "One of my first big fires was the Big Country Fire in West Texas that burned some 300,000 acres of brush and grass," he recalled. "I was on several major fires in California plus I was on the Yellowstone Fire, the North Fork Fire, the Bitterroot Fire, and the Mesa Verde Fire in Colorado." "In fighting forest fires out west, you get to see a lot of the country that other people never get to see," Cohrs noted. "I remember on the Mesa Verde Fire in Colorado that the fire exposed some Indian artifacts and buildings that had probably not been seen in decades if not in hundreds of years." In addition to working in Fire Management positions while on the Sabine, Cohrs also worked in timber management programs. During the early 1990's in the height of the natural gas Austin Chalk frenzy, Cohrs became a National Oil and Gas specialist. "I really enjoyed my time in lands and minerals," Cohrs, explained. "There was always so much activity going on at that time you were also super busy. It's much like the schedule of a District Ranger, always busy busy. But the busiest time in my Forest Service career was during the 81 day search for the wreckage of the Columbia. Not only did we have to handle the logistics of the search but we were constantly having to give interviews with the news media. After the search was over, a NASA historian came to interview me about all the particulars of the US Forest Service actions during those 81 days. After the NASA historian, a historian from the US Forest Service came for an interview," Cohrs added. "I decided to sit down and write a detailed report on my actions during the search for the Forest Service guy. My details took up about 24 pages. One of the better accounts of the search for the wreckage of the Columbia was a book written by Byron Star of Hemphill, Texas," Cohrs said. "Apparently the most amazing thing to NASA was that we were able to recover the DEX Recorder of the Columbia. It was about the size of a VCR player. It had a heat shield and was intact when we found it. You could still read the federal government property number on the DEX Recorder." "The Recorder gave NASA all the minute information about everything that went on during the re-entry by the Columbia," Cohrs explained. "There was a report about all the information gathered from the Recorder on CNN this last December. One of the things that I distinctly remember when the explosions from the Columbia woke me up that morning was that I started praying," Cohrs remembered. "It was truly amazing how people from all walks of life came together to help in the aftermath of Columbia going down." The US Forest Service is a first responder in all national disasters. The Forest Service played a role in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing and was also involved in the New York City 9/11 disaster relief effort. "There is a lot of history here on the Winn district of the Kisatchie," Cohrs concluded. "My job is to continue to build on the legacy of good timber management, habitat development, recreational activities, and community involvement. I'm a strong believer in controlled burning for both timber management and habitat development. I'm sure that everything that we do won't please everyone, but as I see it, my job during my tenure here on the Winn District is to continue to be good stewards of the Forest," Cohrs emphasized. "I do realize that is a big challenge." Cohrs has lived with his wife Sandra in Hemphill, Texas for the last 21 years. His first US Forest Service job was on the Ouachita National Forest in southwest Arkansas and he spent time in Forestry Silviculture on the Ouachita. He is an Oklahoma State University graduate in Agricultural Business and Forest Management, and started out with the US Forest Service as a student trainee. The Cohrs' have two grown children who live in Beaumont. |