All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 12, 1996 - Bill Cooper
58:03
OKC #2
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
*Piano music* Yes, and I will be the good man of the sea.
Thank you.
You're listening to the Hour of the Time.
I'm William Cooper.
Ladies and gentlemen, I hope tonight you're all settled back and listening.
Because I'm going to astound you some more.
I'm William Cooper.
I'm William Cooper.
The Second Continental Army of the Republic is looking for good, reliable, responsible Americans who are leaders with organizational skills and military experience.
We will put you to work.
We will not accept applications from racists, bigots, religious fanatics, self-proclaimed prophets, reactionaries, or convicted felons.
And I hate to tag that last one on, especially if someone has served their time, but the fact is we must stay completely above reproach.
And so far, the Second Continental Army of the Republic has been completely and totally above reproach and will continue to operate in that manner.
If you were listening last night, you were beginning to learn the quality of our people, the thoroughness of our work, our dedication, our willingness to sacrifice.
We're not interested in anyone who wants to scratch their own egos.
We want people who are interested in doing whatever needs to be done, legally and lawfully, to save freedom for all people.
We need people who can undergo and pass a complete background examination, who are willing to take a note of allegiance to the Constitution for the United States of America
and to the Constitution for their state, who will obey all legal and lawful orders of the officers appointed above them, who can keep their mouth shut and adhere to the policy of the Second Continental Army of the Republic.
If you believe that you are one of these people, men, women, Jew, black, Buddhist, white, Native American.
We don't care.
If you fit the description of the people that I have just outlined, send me a letter.
Immediately.
And someone will contact you.
Send it to the Intelligence Service.
Post Office Box 1420.
Sholo, Arizona.
85901.
That's the Intelligence Service.
Post Office Box 1420.
Sholo, Arizona 85901.
That's the intelligence service.
Post office box 1420.
Sholo, Arizona 85901.
Make sure that you include a complete resume and an address and a phone number where you can be contacted.
The End
Ladies and gentlemen, last night I read to you just a little bit of chapter 1 of a book that is being prepared by last night I read to you just a little bit of chapter 1 of a book that is being prepared by Major Michelle Marie Moore, the commanding officer of the
and And I'm sure that many of you were shocked and surprised and probably very pleased at the amount of information in the detail which characterizes all of our work.
And you're going to be even more impressed tonight as I continue.
And I want to caution anyone out there who may be taping this for the purpose of reproducing it.
This is copyrighted material and these tapes will not be sold by the Intelligence Service Nor may they be reproduced by you, nor may they be transcribed in any form whatsoever, and they may not be passed out or distributed.
Period.
There is no appeal.
Do not call and ask.
Anyone who violates the copyright of this material will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, I can assure you.
Ladies and gentlemen, and It's going to be an extremely thick book, or will appear in two volumes.
What you are hearing is minuscule, and is so detailed, you have no conception.
I keep telling you this, and I know you don't understand it.
You have no conception of what we have discovered and can document in fact.
Not conjecture, not somebody said so, in fact.
Testimony on tape.
And sworn affidavits.
Videotape.
Audio tape.
Documentation.
Film.
And once this work is finished, there will probably be a follow-up to it at some point down the line.
Thank you.
Thank you.
There will be other works published by the intelligence service, by other people who are also working on this investigation.
When it's finished, you will finally understand.
And you will understand what we've been warning you about all these years.
You will understand why you must prepare and what you are facing.
For truly, the enemy has no conscience, no morals, no ethics, no tears.
The End
You will find, ladies and gentlemen, that as we progress through the next weeks, the next month and months to follow, that things will become much clearer because as I have told you many times in the that things will become much clearer because as I have told you many times in the past, there were things that I could not So...
Simply because, ladies and gentlemen, if we did reveal them before it became necessary, or before we felt that we were strong enough to protect ourselves, you would never have heard this broadcast for the last few years.
That little bit of music I knew would give you a sense of expectation so that you could more better receive the message that I just gave you.
Don't miss one single hour of this broadcast.
If you do, you will be sorry.
Thank you.
As usual, ladies and gentlemen, I will back up a little bit and read the last thing that you heard so that you will be reminded what...
Where you left off.
Mr. Cooper told me to observe a pattern that would soon emerge.
He predicted that Islamic fundamentalists would initially be blamed for the disaster, but within a few days, charges would be leveled against militia groups in the United States.
I filed that information in the back of my mind for future reference.
It would be only 51 hours until Mr. Cooper's prediction came to pass, and by that time I fully understood how he could so accurately make that prediction.
By then, the disinformation campaign was in full swing.
By then, the evidence of a major cover-up by federal authorities was obvious and well-documented to anyone who could break through the mass hypnotic hysteria.
This hysteria was the result of a saturation attack on the public perpetrated by the national media and directed by the United States Department of Justice.
It was going to be difficult to say nothing of treacherous to keep footing on firm logical ground in the face of what occurred over the days which followed.
In the meantime, Ms.
Lee Evans of KFOR Channel 4 Television received a telephone call at 9.45 a.m.
from an unidentified male claiming to be a member of the Nation of Islam.
The caller stated that the Nation of Islam claimed responsibility for the bombing and that such a thing could happen again in other buildings in the area.
The caller immediately hung up.
Ms.
Evans contacted the Nation of Islam headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, hoping to speak with Minister Louis Farrakhan.
to ask him to confirm or deny the claim.
She was told by Nation of Islam representatives that the organization would hold a press conference in the afternoon to comment on the matter, but at that time they had nothing to say in response.
Later that afternoon, shortly before 2.30 p.m., the Nation of Islam National Headquarters released a statement denying any involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing, Nation of Islam officials emphatically deny any connection with the terrible act and, along with the entire country, pray for the success of public officials, rescue workers, and all those working to save lives and property.
The Chicago headquarters announced that an official press conference would be held at 3 p.m.
and further statements would be made at that time.
The rumors, claims, Counterclaims and denials about Middle Eastern perpetrators continued at full strength for two and one-half days, and would later reappear as other independent investigations directed by the local news media got underway.
Only once was any effort made by the news media to discern and publicize the difference between the Nation of Islam and the Middle Eastern practitioners of the Islamic religion.
That there was a substantial difference between the two groups, to say nothing of the differences between Muslims and Muslim fundamentalists, was never fully explained publicly.
To the general public, they were all the same thing, and this ignorant and prejudicial view caused great tension in the Islamic communities of Oklahoma City, Norman, and Edmond.
Dr. M. A. Shakir, A cardiologist and president of the American Muslim Association in Oklahoma City addressed the situation in the newspapers.
He had spent hours working at the bombsite, helping the rescuers and providing treatment to the injured.
Dr. Shakir's wife, an anesthesiologist at St.
Anthony Hospital, had worked a seven-hour shift aiding the wounded until the hospital began to send medical personnel home when it became apparent that there were going to be few, if any, Additional Survivors.
Said Dr. Shakir, there is an element of concern in the Muslim community, and told they find whoever did it, that there might be a backlash.
As a doctor, as a parent, I can feel the tragedy.
Nobody in the Muslim Association in any way condones the crime, and everyone hopes the criminals, whoever they are, will be punished.
The media was asked to remain objective and calm and to act with restraint.
In the late afternoon, Ibrahim Hooper, National Communications Director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington, D.C., stated that the possibility of a Middle Eastern suspect did not mean that the suspect was necessarily a Muslim.
Quote, This is what happens in these situations, Hooper said, but there are no suspects.
Why people jump to those conclusions that this was done by Muslims, I don't know.
The thing is, members of the Muslim community hesitate to even discuss this, because even in condemning it, we're associating ourselves with it." The Council on American Islamic Relations, in conjunction with other American Muslim groups, issued a formal statement condemning the bombing attack as a criminal and immoral act.
The statement also said, To link this attack with the religion of Islam places millions of responsible American Muslims at risk.
The sentiment of most Muslims in the Oklahoma City area was summed up by one gentleman who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
He said, We are just like any other Americans here.
We condemn it as much as anybody else.
That there were people of Middle Eastern descent in the Oklahoma City area should not have come as a surprise to anyone.
There's a large, peaceful, and well-respected Middle Eastern Islamic population in the metropolitan area, ranging in estimated numbers from 6,000 to 10,000 people.
For at least two decades, The University of Oklahoma in Norman had attracted large numbers of Middle Eastern students because of its excellent petroleum engineering and land management degree programs.
The Oklahoma City area was home to many wonderful business and professional people of Middle Eastern descent, and the city of Edmond, located 15 miles north of Oklahoma City, had recently erected a mosque in which Islamic worshippers practice their religion.
The aspersions cast upon those from the Middle East, all of whom were automatically and wrongfully assumed to be of the Islamic face, were racist, prejudicial, and predictable.
Many local citizens assumed that given the violent nature of the war in the Middle East and the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993, It was only logical that Muslim fundamentalists must surely have been responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City as well.
Few local people, if any, ...realized that court documents filed in May following the World Trade Center event revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had been implicated in the World Trade Center bombing, that it had supervised the building of the bomb, that it had planned and directed the event, and that an FBI employee even instructed accused bomber Mohammed
Salome now to drive the infamous Ryder rental van two days before the explosion occurred.
In addition, the court documents, in addition to the court documents, The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times had published transcripts of tapes made between an FBI informant and his federal government handlers which clearly documented and demonstrated the degree of involvement of the FBI in the World Trade Center bombing, a disaster designed to achieve a specific political end.
That the manipulated suspects in the New York tragedy were of Middle Eastern descent, and were considered Islamic fundamentalists, was very convenient indeed for providing ready-made suspects in the Oklahoma City bombing.
A similar, and at times identical, scenario would play itself out in the local and federal investigations into the Oklahoma City bombing.
The rumors of Middle Eastern terrorists were but the first of many speculations and false assumptions which would rule the day.
Of even greater import were the rumors that only one explosion had occurred on the morning of April 19th.
There has always been a tremendous amount of evidence which indicated multiple blasts.
But for some reason, federal officials denied them.
Then, and continue to deny today that more than one explosion occurred.
you Within three seconds of the blast, the first call for help was received by the Oklahoma City Fire Department.
The emergency tapes revealed that the initial report described more than one explosion.
We have a large column of smoke to the south of this address.
We just heard some loud explosions." The earliest reports of the bombing made by eyewitnesses indicated that there had been the sounds of two distinct and separate explosions.
Evidence would later indicate that there had, in actuality, been several explosions, which occurred so closely in time as to sound to the ear like one detonation In conjunction with the detonation of the cover-up bomb, the proverbial yellow Ryder rental truck supposedly filled with many blue 55-gallon barrels of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with fuel oil.
To the ears of witnesses within a few miles of the scene, there were unmistakably two concussions followed by the long, low rumbling of the collapse of the Murrah Federal Building.
Who lives approximately three miles to the northwest of the Muir Building was in his front yard working on his car and listening to his scanner radio at the time of the explosions.
He reported hearing two very loud, staccato-like explosions, separated in time by five to eight seconds, followed by a long, diminishing, rumbling sound like rolling thunder, and lower in pitch than the first two explosions.
Mr. Wooley stated that he first thought that the railroad cars at Northwest 36th Street and Broadway Extension had blown up, or that a natural gas explosion had occurred.
Immediately thereafter, he reported that the scanner radio went nuts as rescue workers began arriving at the scene.
Jim Ferguson, one of the assistant building managers and the electrician and air conditioning foreman for the Mirror Building, stated, quote, Everybody who was there knows there were two blasts." At the time of the explosions, he was in an office at the U.S.
Federal Courthouse behind the south side of the Muir Building.
He firmly declared that he heard two distinct and separate explosions.
Mr. Ferguson's wife was shopping a mile and a half away when the explosions occurred.
She reported hearing two blasts about five to eight seconds apart and said she saw two separate clouds of dust and smoke rising from the building.
Two blocks from the Murrah building, P. G. Wilson had been starting his day's work at the Investors' Capitol building when the explosions occurred.
He said, quote, The walls seemed to bulge out as if pulled by a strong wind, and debris fell from the ceiling and walls.
A second explosion came after the first one, and shards of glass began flying in the office.
The office employees ran from inside the building.
The odor of sulfur was very strong.
Two attorneys with offices in downtown Oklahoma City were both dictating correspondence at the time of the explosions.
The taped record of the two explosive events and the rumblings of the collapse of the Muir building are clearly discernible on the audio cassettes.
Michael Henson lived in the YMCA building located a half block diagonally to the northeast of the Muir building.
He was standing on the corner of Northwest 5th Street at 8.50 a.m.
on the morning of April 19th.
Because he had missed the first bus, which would have taken him to work, Henson ran east another block to the corner of Broadway to catch another bus at 8.55 a.m.
He remarked how thankful he was that he had chosen to catch the Broadway bus.
His initial thought had been to catch the 9.05 a.m.
bus, which stopped directly in front of the Murrah Federal Building.
After boarding the Broadway bus, Mr. Hinton seated himself next to the bus driver, rode to the transfer terminal to connect with the bus he was to take to the state capitol.
He stated, quote, I had just climbed aboard the bus and sat down when I heard this very violent rumble under the bus.
It was a pushing type motion.
It actually raised that bus up on its side.
About six or seven seconds later, another one, which was more violent than the first, pushed the bus again, and I thought the second time the bus was going to turn over." The driver threw the bus into gear and beat a hasty retreat from the area.
The passengers on the bus, all of whom distinctly heard and felt the two explosions, learned moments later that the Federal Building had been destroyed As they saw the streets filling with emergency vehicles.
Just prior to the explosions, a staff meeting was underway at the Oklahoma Water Resources Board Building located on Northwest Fifth Street, opposite the west end of the Muir Building.
The audio tape of the staff meeting clearly recorded two separate explosions.
The rumbling collapse of the building and the panicked escape of the employees of the Water Resources Board as they picked their way through the falling ceilings, flying glass, and collapsing walls of their building.
Lt.
Col.
George Wallace had had much experience with explosives.
He had served in Vietnam and was a retired Air Force fighter pilot with 26 years in the service.
From his home, Nine miles northwest of the Federal Building, Lt.
Col.
Wallace was pouring a cup of coffee when, quote, I saw it jiggle and shake.
I immediately ran outside, end quote.
As an experienced combat pilot, he stated the explosions sounded like the sound of a succession of bombs being dropped in the distance, an unmistakable sound he had heard often in Vietnam.
Dr. Charles J. Mankin of the Oklahoma Geological Survey, located in the Sarkis Energy Building on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma, granted an extensive interview about the interpretations of the seismic records of the events.
Dr. Mankin stated, and we have this on tape in his own voice, quote, We had originally heard there were two explosions.
That was what came over the radio.
And so, when we heard there were two, and we saw these two events on the seismic record, the logical conclusion was to say, well, the first one looks about right for the time, and so apparently the second one relates to the second blast.
That was a hell of a blast.
All I can tell you is that there were two events.
They look very similar.
We've done every analysis we can think of.
We know it's not the air blast.
There's no question about that.
The time is dead wrong.
Everybody has agreed to that.
While we can't rule out a refraction, which is an echo, everybody that has looked at the signal has said a refraction would really be strange because there's absolutely no loss of energy in the recorded seismic signal.
The second event has the same amplitude as the first.
So if you get a refraction, like an echo off of a building, a refracted wave, You're going to have a loss of energy.
You'll lose a part of the energy in the process.
And so, the fact that the two events are of equal intensity suggests, well, that makes it difficult.
Secondly, the arrival time is wrong for a refracted wave.
You're going to have to take it, the refraction, off the mantle or off of basement rocks or something.
The problem with the shallow section of the Earth's crust between here and Oklahoma City is that we've got a pile of rather discontinuous sandstone and shale, a big delta called the Garber Delta.
That's where we get our water.
It's a big delta consisting of channels of sand that go from east to west, and they're irregularly scattered through this pile of material.
There aren't coherent layers from which you could get a reflection until you get to some depth, and if you try to calculate the travel time down and back up, the time is wrong, and it still wouldn't be the same intensity.
Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the hour of the time is brought to you by Swiss America Trading, and I'm going to trust you to call them at 1-800-289-2646 rather than interrupt the continuity of this broadcast any more than I already have.
Do it and thank them profusely for sponsoring this broadcast.
Tell them that you're a steady listener.
and you'll receive red carpet treatment. 1-800-289-2646. Do it now. 1-800-289-2646.
2-800-289-2646.
So we ruled out reflections, refractions in the air blast.
And this is Dr. Mankin, still speaking.
The thing I can't rule out is that there could have fortuitously been an earthquake somewhere.
But we didn't pick up anything like an earthquake, so we determined it was a local phenomenon.
From an earthquake, you pick up surface waves some distance away.
But here, we knew the building was blasted.
We knew where it was.
We had the seismometer, and we got this record and said, OK, if it was this building, then this first event would have occurred at 9.02 plus some seconds.
And if you look at the second, it looks very much like a quarry blast, very much like some of the information you would expect.
So our interpretation of this event is that these signals on the seismic record are the building being blown up.
Now, that interpretation was confirmed in an indirect way by the Omniplex seismometer sitting up in Oklahoma City.
It picked up two events.
Unfortunately, their clock was malfunctioning, and so we couldn't get an absolute time number.
But we saw the two events on our seismograph, and we saw the two events on their seismograph.
We said the Omniplex was closer to the event, so it should have higher amplitude.
It did.
There should be two events if we are both recording the same thing.
The Omniplex had two events, and we had two events.
We determined that these two records of these two events corroborate our interpretation that there were two explosions." Although we did not realize that at the time, the witnesses who reported hearing two separate explosions would not be heard from again that day, nor for many days to come.
When their stories began to be told weeks later, few would be willing to allow their names to be used for fear of government harassment.
Their stories were, for some unknown reason, being discounted or completely suppressed.
None of the witnesses who had initially told radio news reporters of hearing two explosions were ever interviewed a second time.
No account of the two explosions was recorded in the newspapers, which hit the stands later that Wednesday afternoon.
None of the newspapers published the next morning told the story of the two explosions.
As far as the mainstream media was concerned, the two explosions simply did not occur.
The representatives of the media were told by federal officials what to say and how to explain the event to the public, and the media obeyed.
Approximately two months after the bombing, ABC National News claimed that it had just acquired the audio tape from the staff meeting at the Oklahoma Water Resources Board Building and a heavily edited, heavily edited, heavily edited version was aired on television.
The televised version of the tape revealed only the first explosion, followed by very poorly executed and obvious audio edits, leading directly to the panic-stricken escape section of the tape.
The sounds of the second explosion and the collapse of the Mira building had been completely removed from the televised version of the Water Resources Board tape.
It was assumed that the sloppy editing of the tape had been done under the direction of ABC News.
One has to ask, who ordered ABC News, if indeed they did it, to edit the tape prior to national broadcast, and why was it so important to remove all evidence of the secondary explosions?
Who was being protected by those audio edits?
Why?
Why was the story altered?
By nature of the injuries which resulted from the bombing, the bodies of the dead and the remains of the building itself all told a story which contradicted the official reports.
Those official reports began taking over the airwaves on the afternoon of April 19th.
The building had been destroyed from within, from within and from without.
The fact that the entire north face of the Muir Building had been blown fifty yards away to smash into the Journal Record Building was the simplest of indications that one or more explosions had to have occurred within the building itself.
The children in the second-floor daycare center had been eating breakfast at the side of the room at approximately 9 a.m.
The North Wall of the Day Care Center, which faced Northwest Fifth Street, had been blown away from the Day Care Center, and the inner wall, which buried the children, had been blown outwardly upon them from the inside of the building, crushing them where they sat at the breakfast table.
Later in the investigation, the spokesman for the Medical Examiner's Office, Ray Blakeney, would report that bodies of some victims had been blown outwardly from the building through concrete walls and into the street.
Ray Blakeney would report that bodies of some victims had been blown outwardly from the building through concrete walls and into the street.
Why?
One rescue worker on the scene commented about the instability of the building.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol Trooper Kyle Greenfield left the building saying, That building could go at any minute.
It's totally shook off its foundation.
But the foundational rooting of the building stretched four stories deep into the earth.
A single bomb located 15 to 20 feet from the building at the street level would not have greatly affected the foundational structure underground.
Only explosive devices placed within the building at the bases of the support columns could have shaken the building from its underground foundation.
Jim Hargrove worked in the office of the Inspector General for the United States Department of Health and Human Services.
His office was located on the south side of the building.
Mr. Hargrove said, quote, The most disconcerting thing about my office is there is an office to the right of me and an office to the left of me, and after the explosion there was just nothing there.
It was bare.
I looked out from my office, which was on the south side, and normally I couldn't see anything except the other offices, and there was nothing there at all.
No offices.
Instead, I could see my car out in the parking lot on fire.
We tied curtains together and lowered ourselves through the window of the third floor to escape.
Something was terribly wrong with the big picture.
If the bomb had been in the street, why wasn't the front of the building blown into the building?
Why was the damage so asymmetrical?
Why was so much of the building destroyed?
Why had the columns in the building collapsed vertically as if they had been sliced away from the foundation?
Within a few hours of the event, The members of the news media suddenly began stressing, with much repetition, that there had been only one explosion.
They all stated too emphatically, too many times, that the one explosion alone had done all of the damage which we were seeing on television.
I silently wondered about these strange, apparent contradictions.
I wondered why the media had stopped airing the interviews of the witnesses who had heard two explosions.
who had seen two pillars of smoke, who had felt two concussions right before my very eyes.
Within only a few hours of the explosions, the official story of the event was being carefully crafted, cautiously molded, and delicately manipulated away from the testimony of witnesses to become something else entirely.
some fiction that had virtually nothing to do with what had actually occurred.
I wondered who was doing it and why, but most of all, I wondered why no one else was asking any questions.
Charles Caleb Colton once said, Examinations are formidable, even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.
Barely an hour had passed since the explosions occurred.
The television stations were endlessly rerunning the aerial shots of the Federal Building, taken moments after the bombing by video cameras mounted in their traffic report helicopters.
Anchor desk personnel tried in vain to find profound words to explain to the viewing public what had happened.
But on the scanner radios there was no poetic explanation, no Pulitzer Prize-winning prose.
There was no one to middleman the information coming across that medium, and there was no way to wrap the event in a nice newsroom package.
It was raw, and it was happening right then.
The first call for emergency help had been received by the Oklahoma City Fire Department three seconds, three seconds after the explosions.
Quote, We have a large column of smoke to the south of this address.
We just heard some loud explosions.
End quote.
Within seconds of that call for assistance, reports of injuries at the scene began pouring over the scanner.
Quote, we have several injuries downtown on an explosion at the YMCA on 5th.
There's injuries all over the place downtown.
Oklahoma City firefighter Monty Baxter, arriving at the disaster at 9.03 a.m., was the first fireman on the scene.
He radioed back to fire department headquarters, this explosion is at the corner of 5th Street and Robinson.
We have multiple injuries.
Other fire trucks began to arrive, driving into the dense black smoke.
From the scanner we heard, We need to get a pumper over here on Robinson.
We could put out these car fires and cut down on your black smoke a little bit.
As one group of firefighters concentrated on putting out the fires in the parking lot across the street from the New York building, others began trying to assess the number and nature of the injuries.
Said Sgt.
Eric Thompson, there were people crawling, just stumbling out to the street.
Several people were bleeding.
There was debris everywhere.
There was still stuff falling out of the air.
Within minutes, medical personnel began arriving at the scene in great numbers.
Paramedic Mark Robinson stated, I and my partner and five other paramedics in plain clothes all piled into the back of one of the ambulances at headquarters and we headed down to the scene immediately.
Many medics came rushing from area hospitals.
Some drove downtown from their homes and some drove miles from out of town to assist in any way possible.
One hospital later reported receiving telephone calls from as far away as Illinois, asking if any additional help was needed.
Within the first hour, at all, all Oklahoma City hospitals, volunteers had arrived in such great numbers that there was a doctor available for every injured person needing treatment.
And there was a nurse, and often two or more nurses present to assist every doctor.
Upon arriving at the bombsite, Emergency medical technician Scott Moore stated, We were immediately swarmed by about 20 or 30 people, all with lacerations to the face.
Some had chest injuries.
Some were pale, apparently in shock, all saying, Can you do something?
And can you help us?
Within those early moments, the scope of the disaster became apparent from the scanner reports.
We're reporting multiple incidents inside the county courthouse in the YMCA building.
Mass casualty incident at that location over a six-block area.
We're not sure what the center of the explosion was at this time.
At 9.08 a.m., witnesses monitoring the scanners knew exactly where this disaster had occurred, and from that source, the news media went into action, informing the world.
The words of the firefighter reporting what he saw sent waves of shock through everyone listening.
The whole front of the Federal Building is gone and all floors to the roof.
The blast had not only devastated the Murrah Federal Building, but had also destroyed cars, tossed a tractor-trailer rig through a fence, crushed brick walls, collapsed smaller concrete buildings in the area, caused foundation shifting in the larger buildings nearby, and shattered windows for miles around.
Eventually, many other buildings in the area would be searched for possible victims and assessed for structural damage.
The final toll of damaged buildings would exceed two hundred.
Two hundred.
Responding to the urgent request for assistance, the Norman Police Department sent two medical crews of six people along with Captain Phil Cotton and the Emergency Medical Service disaster bus, which could be used as a triage center CAPABLE OF TREATING A LARGE NUMBER OF INJURED.
THE DISASTER BUS WAS THEN STATIONED AT THE CORNER OF NORTHWEST SIXTH AND ROBINSON STREET TO HANDLE TRIAGE FROM THAT LOCATION.
THE PURPOSE OF A TRIAGE STATION IN A MASS CASUALTY INCIDENT IS TO SORT THE MERELY INJURED FROM THE DYING AND THE DEAD, TO PRIORITIZE THE NEEDS FOR MEDICAL TREATMENT.
SCOTT MOORE EXPLAINED THE TRIAGE FUNCTION IN MORE DETAIL.
THE UNRESPONSIVE The patients with mortal injuries, like the tracheal lacerations, the woman with the portion of the filing cabinet impaled into her chest, still stuck there.
Those people went out first.
Ones that had severe injuries were set in another section.
They were also laying down.
Then we had a section for the walking wounded.
Those were the people there that had glass cuts and looked severe, but really weren't severe, said paramedic Don Carter.
We couldn't tie up our complete attention for those that were still able to walk.
There were more critical patients that needed our attention that were either unconscious or couldn't walk due to their injuries.
The calls for medical help dominated the scanner traffic.
We've got a lot of victims here at... What the hell is that?
6th and Robinson.
I'm at 5th and Harvey.
We've got quite a few injured right here.
We need some help!
I need at least three ambulances at the corner of 5th and Hudson.
I've got three patients that are in critical condition.
We've got about four or five critical right now and about a hundred walking wounded.
We've got two critical at 10th and Hudson.
We need a unit.
I'm at 4th and Harvey.
I need a hospital.
I've got one critical head and eye.
We're getting ready to depart.
We've got two critical and one walking wounded.
Can you advise which hospital?
We're starting to run into equipment shortages.
The squad that is stationed at Station 1, have them gather up the medical supplies and run down to Northwest 5th and Robinson.
Norman Regional Hospital sent 15 medical staff members and many supplies to aid in the rescue operation.
Paramedic instructors from the Moore Norman Vocational Technical Center coordinated the staffing of the EMS disaster bus, said one medical technician.
We had approximately 15 to 20 people laying on the ground with various types of injuries.
There was enough blood covering each person that I didn't know who was injured and who wasn't injured.
You literally just had to go up and ask them, Are you hurt?
Additional triage units were quickly established on the east and south sides of the Muir building, often moving from place to place wherever triage was needed at the time.
The old post office building located south of the federal courthouse on Dean A. McGee Street was transformed into a temporary hospital.
Television cameras captured the scene of a double line of fourteen ambulances removing the injured.
In the early moments after the explosion, Ambulance Service Provider, EMSA, had requested that the Norman ambulances provide coverage to the Moore and South Oklahoma City areas.
But within a half hour after making that request, EMSA summoned all available ambulances in the surrounding metropolitan area to the scene of the disaster.
When all of the statistics were compiled several months later, we learned that there had been 66 emergency medical units involved in the rescue operation, 34 from Oklahoma City, 29 from Mutual Aid, which is surrounding communities, and three from Tulsa.
The number of people transported by these medical units was 215, 95 by EMSA, 44 by mutual aid, and 76 by other means, bus or police vehicle.
An unknown number of patients were transported by private civilian vehicles.
Two command units were on the scene within two minutes of the explosion, and three life support units were placed on 24-hour The response to the bombing utilized 165 EMSA employees, and the helicopters involved in the rescue operation came from Metaflight, Oklahoma, and Fort Still Mast Flights.
Other emergency medical service agencies involved in the rescue operations came from Anadarko, Ardmore, Carnegie, McLean County, Purcell, Sinor, Stevens County, Stillwater, Watonga, Wellston, Impact EMS, Watonga, Wellston, Impact EMS, EMSA Eastern Division, Life EMS, and LifeSat EMS.
There were more than twice as many medically trained volunteers who were not affiliated with an EMS agency who assisted in the rescue operation.
In spite of the fact that their numbers can be estimated but not accurately calculated, their contributions to the effort cannot be discounted.
We will also never know how many of the injured were taken to area hospitals in the vehicles of private civilians.
There was a large number of emergency vehicles available at the scene, but the number of injured far exceeded the capacity of those vehicles.
Without the willingness of private citizens to transport the wounded to area hospitals in their own cars, trucks, or vans, the death toll of the bombing might have been much, much greater.
Thank you.
That willingness of heart to serve in whatever capacity needed made the difference between life and death for many of the injured.
Within the first hour after the bombing, St. Andrew...
Anthony Hospital sent out an emergency call for blood and requested that all off-duty medical employees report to the hospital to work.
Similar calls for medical personnel went out from all metro area hospitals.
It was called Situation Code Black, a state of total emergency which required every available medic to be on hand in a state of readiness.
The Cleveland County Norman Red Cross announced that the disaster had placed a tremendous drain on the blood supply and asked everyone who was at least 17 years old in good health and who weighed at least 110 pounds to come to the Red Cross Blood Center at Max Westheimer Airfield, located in North Central Norman.
Within 30 minutes of the announcement, the Blood Donation Center was overwhelmed with donors.
The parking lot fills to capacity, and cars were parked for hundreds of yards along the roadway and in the grassy fields surrounding the center.
Within two hours, the Norman Red Cross announced that they could not take any other donors at the Westheimer location because the response to the call had been so generous.
A secondary blood donation center was hastily set up on Haley Drive near the University of Oklahoma campus in the Delta Gamma House.
It, too, rapidly filled to capacity with volunteer donors.
Good night, ladies and gentlemen, and God bless you all.
Good night.
the
▲
Export Selection