NACOGDOCHES, Texas (AP) -- NASA warned members of the public Sunday against trying to sell purported Columbia debris on eBay, as local law enforcement agencies struggled to cordon off and protect the hundreds of pieces of wreckage.
"People should not be collecting that at all. It's all government property,'' said NASA spokesman Bruce Buckingham.
Hours after the shuttle broke up Saturday over Texas, raining smoking debris over the countryside, listings for pieces began appearing on the Internet auction site. The items were quickly removed by eBay.
Buckingham said he was stunned.
"We live in an evil world, and there are people that will do those types of things,'' he said at Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
NASA does not know whether the items are authentic, but ``even someone pretending to sell something that came from Columbia is still bad,'' Buckingham said.
The range of the debris field _ hundreds of square miles _ strained the resources of sheriffs and police officers. Officers used horses, four-wheel-drive vehicles and satellite tracking devices to search for pieces, and then had to find ways to protect them until they were collected for analysis.
Some looting was reported in Nacogdoches County, where dozens of pieces of debris have been found, Sheriff Thomas Kerss said. The FBI was investigating, he said, but there were no immediate arrests.
No injuries were reported when the debris smashed through a roof, splashed into a reservoir and dropped amid farms, homes and businesses.
However, Sue Kennedy, emergency management coordinator for Nacogdoches County, said 70 people had gone to two hospitals because they had touched debris and were worried. NASA has warned members of the public not to touch any of the debris because it may contain toxic substances.
Across the city of Nacogdoches and the surrounding piney woods, residents found chunks of debris. A small tank rested on a runway. A steel rod with silver bolts was roped off behind yellow police tape in a yard. A piece of metal rested in a bank parking lot.
Debris covered a terrain that ranged from the urban prairie flatlands near Dallas to the hilly pine woods of Louisiana, mostly turning up in tiny blue-collar towns that survive on farming and timber. A piece of tile fell within 75 miles of President Bush's ranch in Crawford.
In Hemphill, near the Louisiana state line, hospital employee Mike Gibbs reported finding what appeared to be a charred torso, thigh bone and skull on a rural road near what appeared to be other debris. Billy Smith, an emergency coordinator for three East Texas counties, confirmed the find.
"I wouldn't want anybody seeing what I saw,'' Gibbs said. ``It was pretty gruesome.''
On a farm, also in Sabine County, two boys found a charred human leg, The Dallas Morning News reported Sunday. ``From the hip to the foot, it's all there, scorched from the fire,'' said their father, Bob White.
Debris has been tracked in a 500-square-mile area but could be spread over a region three times that, said James Kroll, director of the Emergency Geospacial Mapping Center at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches.
Jim Stutzman of Nacogdoches - 135 miles northeast of Houston - found a 9-inch long, 2-inch wide piece of metal in his yard. ``It has heat burns, melted metal and some of the grass burned into it when it fell,'' he said.
Debris found in San Augustine County about 140 miles northeast of Houston included a charred astronaut's patch and a flight helmet.
Debris also fell in western Louisiana, including a smoldering bundle of wires in a Shreveport front yard and pieces that reportedly dropped into Toledo Bend Reservoir on the Texas line. One of the pieces that fell into the reservoir was the size of a compact car, said Sheriff Tom Maddox.
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NASA phone number for people who find debris: 281-483-3388.
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