![]() April 19
Submitted Monday, April 18, 2005 - 10:09:28 PM by Klaitu
So, it's been 10 years since the Oklahoma City Bombing. Having lived here in Oklahoma City for all my life, I occasionally get questioned about the bombing.. certainly less frequently these days, though. I think that people are just genuinely curious as to what it was actually like to be there. Unlike the 9/11 attacks, there were no emotional videos of planes slamming into buildings, or people jumping to their deaths. So, since it's the 10th anniversary, I'll relate my own tale in the story of April 19, 1995.
April 19 started just about like any other day. I was 10 days shy of my 17th birthday. The pressing concern on my life at tha time was my lack of a driver's license, which I wouldn't obtain until later that year. The weather, was by any account a typical Oklahoma Spring Morning.. that being crisp and cool.
Being a weekday, I had to go to school. This was my Junior year in High School, and luckily for me my first hour of school was designated as Independent Study. I took the opportunity to study the inside of my eyelids. School started promptly at 8 AM every weekday, and my Independent Study would end at 8:55 AM. I can remember that on this particular day I didn't sleep the whole 55 minutes through. I decided instead to finish up some work I had to do for one of my afternoon classes.
Now, my High School was actually a pretty small place. There were maybe 120 students in the whole entire school.. and that's counting the elementary as well. In the High School, there couldn't have been more than 40 people. In my grade, 11th, there were only 3 students, and one of them was absent that day.. a buddy of mine named J.T. It wasn't unusual for him to be late. He was the posterchild for the A+ student, and so the administration let him do whatever he wanted.. more or less. I expected him to show up for our second course, a bear of a course "Intermediate French".
I hated French class, but liked the teacher, so it all balanced out. The French class was held in the unused electrical engineering room.. which was essentially a glorified janitor's closet. The Room connected to the Kindergarten class, and they had nap time at 8:55.. lucky dogs. In order to get to the classroom for that course we had to go outside, around the building, and in through the back door so as to not disturb the kindergarteners. When French class let out, the Kindergarteners were on recess, so we could exit through the indoors, then. Thinking back, those Kindergarteners had a good racket going.
My school was the home of the Nazi attendance schedule. If you weren't in your seat at 9:00, you were getting a demerit. It didn't even matter if you were in the room, your butt had to be in the seat.. unless you were the poster boy for the A+ student, who still hadn't shown up as French Class started.
The first order of business for any course at the school was a prayer, which we went through rather routinely. In the silence afterwards, something unique happened. A rumble was heard. It was so sharp and so deep that it made the insulated ceiling tiles jump out of their sockets.
We weren't unaccustomed to rumbles in French class, though. Since the electrical room shared a wall with both the girls and the boys restroom, and whenever anyone would flush the girl's toilet, the pipes running through the wall would cause quite the calamitus ruckus. It was not unusual for the ceiling tiles to shake when this happened. We sort of looked at one another and figured that whoever had flushed the toilet must have needed some extra flushing power. Of course, this is what happened at 9:02 AM, but for the time being, we were completely oblivious.
French class continued uninterrupted. We were doing multiplication in French, and let me tell you.. the numbers are familiar, but the names aren't. It was a relief when the clock struck 9:55 and the class ended. Just as it did, J.T. rushed in and told us that a bomb had been detonated somewhere downtown. We didn't really know to believe him or not, he did tend to be quite the jokester. I got the sense that he was deadly serious, though. We left our books and went to the Cafeteria, where the Principal had set up the school's only TV. It didn't have an antenna, so our first images of the Oklahoma City bombing were from KWTV-CBS (the strongest broadcast signal in Oklahoma) and they were fuzzy and blurry. Thanks to Timothy McVeigh, I had a "get out of Algebra 2 free" card. I think I would have preferred the Algebra.
I knew that I was living through an unforgettable moment in history, so I committed myself to remember every detail I could possibly remember about the experience, so that I could tell people what happened, how it happened, and what it was like.. you know, like I'm doing now. We watched as the cell phone system overloaded. Reporters were following all sorts of unusual leads. At the Kilpatrick Science Museum, the plate tectonics exhibit's seismomenter had registered the blast.
My school is 15.03 miles from Ground Zero, and it lifted the ceiling tiles out of their place. The shock sounded like a crack of strong thunder. My dad, however, was about 4,000 feet from Ground Zero on the 12th floor of the Kerr-MeGee Building in downtown Oklahoma City. His computer monitor lept 2 feet off his desk, and the only reason his window didn't break was because the blast was blocked by a smaller building in the path of the explosion. Of course, I didn't know any of this at the time.. it was impossible to call anyone, so we just sat in the cafeteria and waited.
It was decided that after lunch, classes would resume as usual. Some of us took the time to walk around campus and talk. The big fad in those days was to play Hackey Sack. The largest game of Hackey Sack was played that day under the entrance drive awning. Myself, I watched, as it turns out that my fingers and hands are the only limbs I can operate with any accuracy. We were out there for at least an hour, and only two cars came down the road during that time.. and one was a fire truck.
After lunch, classes proceeded as usual, as everyone put the incident out of their minds temporarily. Of all the people in the school, my dad was the closest to the explosion, so nobody in the school suffered a loss.
When I returned home, we just sat and watched.. and watched.. and watched some more. Every channel had news coverage of the bombing, and some channels were even teaming up. Our UPN affiliate was merely re-transmitting the NBC affiliate's news feed. I was amazed. It was a week before normal programming resumed on any channel. The lost revenue from those commercials that didn't play during that time must have been staggering.
Slowly, the story unfolded on the screen. We all pieced it together as it happened, though we didn't have all the details at that early date.
 Timothy McVeigh and an accomplice had parked a Ryder truck packed with fertilizer behind the Murrah building. The lit a standard fuse and bailed. McVeigh made it to a getaway car and escaped long before the area was barricaded. Nobody really is sure what happened to the accomplice. The explosion completely vaporized the portion of the building it was nearest to, and left a crater 13 feet deep. The internal structure of the first floor was so damaged, that the floor of the second floor collapsed, which pulled the main support beam off it's foundation and caused the collapse of all 6 stories.
There were 361 people in the Murrah building a the time of the explosion. 163 of them died. 166 of them were injured. Only 32 escaped unscathed.. but the Murrah building wasn't the only one affected by the explosion. The Ryder truck bomb destroyed or rendered uninhabitable 17 other buildings in the surrounding area, and being outdoors wasn't much of an advantage with an extraordinary amount of shattered glass falling from stories in the air. 280 other buildings sustained significant damage.
The total of dead came out to 168. 2 people died in the Water Resources Building, 1 in the Athenian Building, One was outside near the truck as it exploded, and the last one was a rescue worker who died during rescue operations. It took 12,384 people 33 days to locate and identify the remains inside the building.
In the aftermath, 387,000 people knew someone killed in the bombing. That's 1/3rd of the entire population of Oklahoma. 190,000 of them attended the funeral services of the victims, which is about 20% of the population. Of those, 30 children were orphaned by the explosion. 219 children lost one of their parents. 462 people lost their homes. All this from an explosion that lasted less than a minute.
Every sort of public servant you can think of was mobilized.. firemen, rescue workers, doctors, nurses, all 5 military branches and their reserves, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. One such Highway Patrolman was Trooper Charlie Hanger. He had been dispatched to the scene to help with the rescue efforts, but never made it. Before he could get there, they decided to return him to his regular patrol in Noble county, Oklahoma. On his return to his regular patrol, he noticed a 1977 Grand Marquis with no license plate and pulled it over. It was driven by Timothy McVeigh.
McVeigh explained away his lack of license plate by saying that he had just purchased the vehicle, but he was unable to produce evidence to support that. He was also carrying a concealed 9mm handgun, which are illegal to conceal in Oklahoma. Trooper Hanger arrested McVeigh and searched the vehicle and dound a red baseball cap, an empty white envelope, and some hand tools. He locked the car and ran a check on McVeigh's gun and drivers license. McVeigh came up clean, so there was no great urgency in taking him to the Noble County jail in Perry, Oklahoma.
On the way to jail, McVeigh manage to plant some evidence.. a business card from a guy named Dave Paulson. MCVeigh was cheesed off at Paulson because he wouldn't sell McVeigh some dynamite and blasting caps. When he arrived at the jail, the troopers slapped him with 4 misdemeanor charges: unlawfully carrying a weapon, transporting a loaded firearm in a motor vehicle, failing to display a current license plate, and failing to maintain proof of insurance.
If you think it was lucky that Trooper Charlie Hanger had just managed to pick up McVeigh during his escape, you're about to witness another amazing coincidence. McVeigh's misdemeanor charges require court time. Usually these sort of things are dealt with promptly, but because McVeigh had been pulled over in a rural area with a single judge, and because that judge was wrapped up in a court case, McVeigh's trial date was set for May 21, 1995.
While McVeigh was trapped in a po-dunk county jail on misdemeanor charges, the FBI was going gung-ho in their attempt to find the doer of the deed. The initial belief among just about everyone was that the OKC Bombing was the work of a foreign terrorist group such as Al Quaeda, but there was an important historical prominence for the date April 19. Two years earlier, the FBI had raided the Branch Davidian cult in Waco, Texas. April 19 is also the anniversary of the Revolutionary War battle of Lexington and Concord (better known as Patriot's Day). It's a holiday particularly popular among militias. FBI profilers tended to discount the foreign connection, and so they began to look for a militia member who was upset about Waco.
More personally, our lives were frozen solid. I still went to school every day, but my dad didn't, as his workplace was inside the Quarantine zone. His efforts were primarily focussed on retrieving his car, which was situated in a downtown parking garage. Eventually, we got permission from the military to go and get it.
My dad, myself, and my uncle went to retrieve it. Driving downtown was eerie. There was no traffic whatsoever, unless you count humvees with army guys in urban combat camo. We had to walk through what I considered to be a maze of twists and turns to get to this parking garage. It didn't have anything to do with the bombing, it was just really strangely designed.
So, as it turned out my dad had happened to park his car on the top floor of the parking garage, which was built into the Kerr-McGee building. When the bomb went off, it shattered every window above the 12th floor, which then rained down onto the parking lot.. and the cars therein, including my dad's. You might be suprised at how much glass is in your typical highrise building.. it's a lot! When propelled by gravity, it can get some serious kinetic energy going.
There were cars in the parking lot where the glass had gone completely through their hoods, roofs, and trunks. Many car windshields were shattered themselves, and then of course it rained, so they were rotted out.
My dad's car didn't suffer much damage, other than dents. Lots and lots and lots of dents. It also had a vinyl half-roof which was seriously cut up. The car ran fine, but the body damage was so extensive that the insurance company totalled it. Amazingly, they did, in fact, pay off on damage from a terrorist attack.
As we navigated the vehicle out of the parking garage maze, we had to go through a military checkpoint, and we caught a glimpse of the bombing site as we passed the intersection. It was nearly dark out, but that place was lit up like daytime. The Navy had flown in special underwater lights that brightened up the area considerably.
Oh, and on a side note, the day before we went and got the car, the military busted Geraldo Rivera for trying to sneak into the bombing site. I found that to be a moment of hilarity in an otherwise somber event.
 So, while we were doing all this, FBI Forensics was all over the crime scene. They located a partially destroyed truck axle that had situated itself smack on the hood of a Ford Festiva. They also uncovered a legible license plate from the area.. both of which belonged to the now exploded Ryder truck. It didn't take them long to trace the parts back to the Ryder agency that rented them, in Junction City, Kansas. McVeigh had used an alias to rent the truck, so they had the employees there generate a composite sketch of the two people who showed up to rent that particular truck.
Darned if they don't look just exactly like Tim McVeigh and Terry Nichols.
The FBI took those composite photos and showed them around town. They scored a hit at a local motel, where they learned McVeigh's real name from the Hotel ledger. Also on the Hotel ledger was his home address.. the same home address that was on his Michigan Driver's License. The Hotel manager also noted that he showed up in a yellow Grand Marquis.
With McVeigh's real name, they could do all sorts of computer searches for McVeigh, and one of those searches turned up that a little-known Trooper had done a search for McVeigh's information in Perry, Oklahoma.. and that he was still in jail on misdemeanor charges. The FBI wasted no time in catching up with McVeigh.. they took helicopters to the jail.
Federal custody was making McVeigh nervous. The Agents were going to transport him to a Federal facility, and that meant he was going to have to go outside.. where hundreds of pissed-off Oklahomans were chanting "bring him out!". McVeigh demanded a bulletproof vest and a helicopter. He got neither of them. A similar scene was going on in Kansas, as the FBI rounded up Terry Nichols.
Meanwhile, at the bombing site the search was nearing completion. The Murrah building was no longer useful as a building, and so on May 23, the building was safely imploded, and the site was surrounded by a 10 foot high fence. Passersby and visitors to the site were keen to place personal effects into the chainlink fence, and it became sort of a makeshift memorial.
It took almost exactly 2 years for McVeigh to get his day in court. His trial began in April of 1997. They had moved the trial from Oklahoma to Colorado to ensure a fair trial, but fair or unfair, McVeigh never really had any chance of being found innocent. the prosecution called 141 witnesses, while the defense called only 27 (3 of them insisted on immunity before they would testify). It took the jury 3 days to come up with the guilty verdict, and the death sentence. During the time before his execution, he was situated in a cell near the 1993 WTC bombing guy, and the unabomber.
At first, he attempted several appeals, but he couldn't get anywhere with them and eventually gave up trying. He was executed by lethal injection on June 12, 2001.
McVeigh was not the only one to face justice, Terry Nichols got himself found guilty of 161 counts of first degree murder and 2 counts of arson.. and those were just the state charges. He had earlier been sentenced to life in prison for conspiracy and Manslaughter. He is now serving two consecutive life sentences for his role in the bombing.
Also convicted was Michael Fortier, who only got 12 years in jail for failing to inform authorites of McVeigh's plan. His sentence was reduced to 12 years after he made a deal and testified against McVeigh.
In the wake of all this, the Federal Government created the nation's smallest national park: The Oklahoma City National Memorial. On one side of the memorial is a giant brass wall that reads "9:01" and on the opposite side is an identical brass wall that reads "9:03" and in between the two are 168 empty self-illuminating chairs and a reflecting pool. Also on the site is the Survivor tree. The tree was part of the building's original landscaping and got blown up with the rest of the building, but survived the encounter.. though it is a bit gnarled.
The Memorial itself has an interesting story, as the raw materials used in its construction are from all over the world. The granite for the reflecting pool is from Canada. The soil lawn material is from London. Components of the 168 chairs were made in California, Oklahoma, and New Hampshire. The granite panels that list the names of the Bombing survivors were recovered from the remains of the Murrah Building before it was imploded.
A lot has happened in the interim.. we've had September 11, 2001 that rocked our world, and when New York and The Pentagon needed it, we sent our veteran rubble rescuers up to lend a hand as they did for us 6 years earlier.
Today is the 10th anniversary of the bombing, and there's lots of stuff going on. The President is going to be in town I believe, and the Memorial is holding special exhibits all this month. There's also some televised coverage for you all to see. Everyone else was deciding to do all this stuff, so I thought that I'd just contribute my small corner of the web to that effort.
Special mad props to the Official OKC Memorial Website for most of the statistics I included. Check them out over at http://www.oklahomacitynationalmemorial.org/index.htm
Also, bonus props to NewsOK.com for helping me dig up the specific charges against those explosive brigands. http://www.newsok.com
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