Terri Talley regained consciousness under chunks of concrete and granite, encased in what should have been her tomb.
Dust and debris from Pendleton native Timothy McVeigh’s truck bomb explosion had torn apart Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building.
She had been sitting in her chair at work on the building’s third floor when the bomb exploded at 9:02 a.m. April 19, 1995. Talley fell to the first floor, blinded by dust and slowly suffocating from the pressure of the debris.
When firefighter Rowdy Baxter found her, only her right arm was visible.
“If you had taken a dump truck and dumped debris on her, that was what it was like,” Baxter said.
Talley asked Baxter to promise he would save her. He said he made the promise.
It was a pledge that turned Baxter into a hero and kept Talley from becoming a grim statistic.
Twenty-five years later, she is still praising the firefighter for not abandoning her when first responders were ordered to leave the building because of fears that a second bomb was about to explode.
He hollered for tools to cut away at the granite and reinforced concrete trapping Talley.
Despite her nearly impossible situation, Baxter said, “I told her she was one of the lucky ones.”
When the body count was complete, McVeigh’s bomb had killed 168 people in what remains the worst act of domestic terrorism ever committed by an American citizen.
Talley’s 'nightmare'
Talley worked in the Federal Employees Credit Union in the nine-story building. Eighteen of the credit union's 33 employees were killed in the bombing.
“I fell to the first floor. I was basically encased in granite and concrete. I was still in my chair … and it gave me this little pocket of protection,” said Talley, who is now 52.
She says that she was dazed and confused when she came to. Unable to see, Talley said she relied on her ears to try and figure out what had happened. Not far from her, she heard running water and thought it might be from a mangled car radiator.
“I thought I had been in a really bad car accident,” she said.
Her instinct was to cry out for help, but she said pressure from debris made that impossible.
“I thought I’m just going to go to sleep and when I wake up everything will be OK, like a nightmare. When I woke, I could hear just one person screaming, ‘Help me,’ ” Talley said. “I thought if they can hear her, maybe they will find me.”
As McVeigh fled in a getaway car, hundreds of first responders rushed to the scene.
Baxter was several blocks away when he heard the explosion. “I knew it was something big,” he said. He was off duty, but went to help.
Though he was dressed in civilian clothes, police recognized Baxter and let him inside the security perimeter they had established.
“I was walking in the rubble. People were running everywhere. I found a few people alive and I found an arm. A little while later, I saw another arm, but I wasn’t going to mess with it. But then I saw it move and I crawled down to it,” he said.
While Baxter, a rugged-looking man, waited for a hydraulic powered jaws-of-life device to cut away the debris, he said he used his hands to dig.
Many of the pieces of debris trapping Talley, he said, were 3 and 4 feet in size and often connected by exposed pieces of rebar, the steel bars used to strengthen concrete.
But that was not Baxter’s only problem. He said he could hear other rescue workers above him working to remove rubble. “You don’t know if something is going to come down,” he said.
With the jaws-of-life, he began cutting away chunks of the building, but after approximately 30 minutes there was an order to evacuate. There was a threat of another bomb going off.
“The Nichols Hills fire chief’s radio went off. I could hear, ‘Evacuate immediately. There is a bomb bigger than the first.’
“I said, ‘We can’t leave her.’ The chief said, ‘I’ll give you two minutes.’ I just grabbed her and yanked and pulled and got her out and others helped me carry her out,” Baxter said.
“The skin on my face was blue,” Talley said. “I was being squished to death.”
Outside the building, Baxter said it was like a ghost town. But fortunately there was no second bomb.
Twenty-five years later, the retired, 60-year-old Baxter, whose first name Rowdy comes from a character in an old television Western, says it is still hard for him to comprehend that he rescued Talley.
“If you’d seen her, there was massive amounts of the building on her and it was stupid to even try,” he said.
Talley, whose two young children were being babysat by grandparents that day, says she has no doubt she would have died if not for Baxter.
Recovering
After approximately three months of recovery, Talley returned to work.
“I went back to work sooner than I should have. I couldn’t walk straight. I had the neck brace still on, but I needed to go back. I felt lost,” she said.
Counseling for post-traumatic stress, she said, helped her reclaim her life.
“I don’t take anything for granted. I’m a happy person,” Talley said.
In four years, she says she hopes to retire from the credit union and work as a reservist for the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“I want to do it with my husband. You help people when they lose everything. I want to give back because I’m blessed to be here,” she said of a second career that would require her to travel to disasters.
As for Baxter, Talley said, “I just love him.”
But Baxter downplays the rescue and says, “I was only doing my job.”
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