That morning, April 19, 1995, the eyes of the world turned to downtown Oklahoma City as what would later be called the most deadly example of domestic terrorism unfolded before a shocked public.
A reported “soft target,” the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building had been bombed with a blast so savage it destroyed and damaged hundreds of buildings and cars within a 16-block radius. Glass was shattered as a result of the shockwave in 258 nearby buildings.
Before the dazed eyes of the American people, word of the attack quickly began streaming though every news outlet as each report seemed more devastating than the last. The bodies included 19 babies and children, all housed in the Murrah Building’s daycare at the time of the attack.
Perhaps the most unbelievable news to come from the incident was that the explosion was not that of a random accident but rather that of design, and that the architect of the destruction was an American, tainted by militia extremism and propaganda.
In the minutes and hours following the blast, responders around the state and the country at large began ascending on Oklahoma City. The 149 miles between Bartlesville and Oklahoma City suddenly seemed shorter, with just a two-and-a-half-hour drive separating the two.
“It’s really hard to describe, thinking back,” said Washington County Emergency Management Director Kary Cox.
At the time of the bombing, Cox was working at the Emergency Operations Center in Beaver, having not yet made the move to Bartlesville.
“My wife had heard and she called and asked if I knew,” Cox said. “And I hadn’t heard.”
Before long he was receiving reports that a group of EOC workers that had been in training in Oklahoma City was headed toward the scene.
“The entire class was asked to go to the scene and help,” Cox said. “We then got requests for personnel and equipment, so we loaded it up and headed there.”
When he got there, Cox was assigned to one of the most grim details on the scene, that of establishing the temporary morgue.
“We had been working on a Mass Fatalities Plan in the months prior to the bombing, and it was because of my involvement (in the program that) I was called,” he said.
Bartlesville Fire Department Assistant Chief Bill Hollander says years and miles have not diminished his feelings on the event. Most of all, he says, he remembers feelings of helplessness.
“Remembering from twenty years ago from my heart — it’s a hard story to write,” Hollander said. “We’re in the business of saving lives and helping families to cope with their losses, so it’s hard when you can’t do that.
“Immediately following the bombing there were tons of people across the country who self-deployed down there,” Hollander said, referencing the action of the many people who responded to the disaster without being requested. First responders say that those who self-deploy, although well intentioned, are often a hindrance to organized rescue efforts.
“Our department decided not to self-deploy, but to rather wait until we were called. Teams of three to five people would be sent on a team and they would call up those teams to be deployed to Oklahoma City to do various tasks,” Hollander said. “We had several people from our department that were deployed, and I was on a team to go. We’d been put on standby to leave that afternoon and we were prepared.”
Hollander said that the in the interim period between the deployment and his team’s departure from Bartlesville, orders were given to stand down.
“We got that call that they weren’t needing any more teams. At that point they had cut off all search and rescue and it had become a recovery effort. There was a sense of sadness, of not being able to help,” he said. “There was a feeling of finality that the rescue operations were over and nothing more could be done … All hope was gone.”
Cox said that on the scene there were many moments of despair but that, in the face of the horror, the human spirit came through.
“I do remember the carnage, how it was the worst,” he said. “I spent the next ten days in the morgue.
“I remember all the different responders and the support personnel and people from different states, and every one came together and there was just absolute and total cooperation. There were no lines between everyone… (we all) worked together.”
Now retired Washington County Undersheriff Dennis Nix was also deployed to the scene.
“We mostly were amazed at the amount of damage that was done. From the bombing point to how far it reached out, you could just stand there and look at it and think, ‘Wow.’”
Nix said that his group was on the perimeter of the area, mainly tasked with keeping onlookers out of the danger zone.
“We were one of the last groups to go down before they shut it down, and by the time we got there it was just recovery,” he said.
“It’s just amazing that someone could use that kind of destruction on innocent people. I remember standing by the deep pit — the crater right in front of it, where the truck was sitting where it went off. There was just mass destruction. It’s a wonder that anybody lived.”
Of the many things that changed that day two decades ago, one was the way first responders react to large scale devastation.
“Events like this and 9/11 have made the entire nation more prepared and, unfortunately, more hardened to the fact that bad things happen,” Hollander said. “We are much more prepared for disaster.”
Cox agrees, saying other events, including the I-40 bridge collapse and the Moore tornado, have required responders to learn more what is needed in a catastrophic situation.
“We continue to improve the training that we provide the responders, the recovery work — all of that continues to improve.,” Cox said. “At that point, we never did a critical incident stress debriefing, and now we know the importance on doing post traumatic stress work with our responders.”
Cox said he has seen a residual effect on responders following the bombing.
For additional coverage of the 20th anniversary of the bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, visit www.examiner-enterprise.com.
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©2015 the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise (Bartlesville, Okla.)
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