When The Bomb Went Off

WHEN A YELLOW Ryder rental truck burst like a bubble into a spray of steel, chrome and glass on April 19 in Oklahoma City, it took only a tenth of a second to end the lives of 167 people, alter the lives of thousands more and stun a nation. For those who lived through the bombing, it was a split second that took them from the commonplace to the unimaginable.

OKLAHOMA CITY - At precisely two minutes past 9 on Wednesday morning, April 19, Priscilla Salyers, an investigator for the U.S. Customs Service, was reading a file at her desk on the fifth floor of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building when agent Paul Ice approached her cubicle and asked a question.

Salyers looked up and said, "What?"

Joe Mitchell was on the first floor, applying for retirement checks in the Social Security office. He'd left his wife in the waiting room and he'd forgotten her birthdate, which he needed to fill out a form. He got up and stepped into a hallway to find her.

U.S. Agriculture Department veterinarian Brian Espy was in a conference room checking slides he planned to use for a lecture the following week.

At that same moment, Oklahoma City Police Sgt. John Avera was taking a breather from moving heavy equipment in his office 10 blocks from the federal building.

And then the bomb went off.

A yellow Ryder rental truck parked at a meter on Fifth Street burst like a bubble into a spray of steel, chrome and glass. Gases from the two-ton bomb roared out at 6,500 feet per second, or about 10 times faster than the top winds of a hurricane, erupting into a cone-shaped wall of scorched air.

In seven-thousandths of a second the shock wave slammed into the building, nearly a half-ton of pressure on every square inch of the building's surface - a release of energy closer to a nuclear explosion than to any force of nature. The curtain of air turned the huge black glass wall of the north facade into millions of glass arrows, moving at the speed of a high-powered rifle bullet. The wave hit all nine floors, lifting them so violently that two-inch steel rebar in the building's concrete support columns snapped like kite strings.

The rapid rise and fall of the floors crushed people already shot full of glass shards. Desks and chairs and file cabinets became dangerous projectiles. Then, as the blast wave dissipated, the floors collapsed. Three of the building's main front support columns were destroyed, so the entire north face funneled down like floodwater in a storm drain.

In a tenth of a second, it was done.

Gone in the violent ripsaw of that split second were the lives of 167 men, women and children, many of them federal workers, many just citizens doing routine business with their government. Terribly altered were the lives of thousands more in this quiet and proudly pedestrian Midwestern city, innocent people maimed physically and emotionally, families destroyed, and a nation left stunned by the consequences of hatred that appears to be home-grown.

America had just met the unbottled demons, authorities say, of one Timothy James McVeigh.

Priscilla Salyers

Priscilla Salyers was having an off morning. She looked in her closet and couldn't decide what to wear. Finally she picked the hot pink blouse. It had a spot on it, but she didn't care because her black jacket would cover it up. She put on a flowered skirt and black shoes that she didn't really like because the heels were too high.

Salyers, a blond-haired woman of 44, was supposed to stop at a friend's house on the way to work at the federal building, but she felt out of sorts and skipped it. She parked in the bottom level of the underground parking garage and took the elevator to the Customs Service office on the fifth floor. She used her special code to unlock the door and turn off the alarm, flicked on the copy machine and made coffee.

It was just after 8 when she fetched the mail. She was sorting it when agent Paul Ice, 42, arrived. They were exchanging small talk when agent Claude Medearis, 41, arrived a few minutes later, waved hello and went straight to his desk to make phone calls.

Shortly before 9, she was back at her cubicle, sipping coffee and arranging the files she'd be reviewing that morning. Her back was to the northside windows. Medearis was on the phone at his desk behind her, facing the same way. Ice had just stepped up to her desk, just a foot away, when he gestured to something on her desk and asked the question.

She looked up. She saw Ice. She started to say "What?" and everything went black.

"Then I saw white flashes and I heard a loud wind noise going past my ears."

She thought she was having a seizure. She felt her head being pushed down, down, she thought, toward her desk. A seizure would be embarrassing. What would people think?

"I thought Paul was going to grab me. I thought, `What is he thinking?' "

It stopped. Everything stopped. Salyers was lying face down, her right arm under her stomach. She was unable to move. She realized, slowly, that she was covered with debris.

Her left arm was free and she could see it from the rubble. But she couldn't move her head. It was under heavy concrete. Her entire body was weighted down with debris. Her breathing was short. She still thought she was on the fifth floor, in her office.

"I reached out for my computer because I thought I was at my desk. But I felt these big rocks."

She started praying.

"I knew I couldn't do this by myself. I prayed for God to give me wisdom to keep me calm." She didn't feel pain and said, "That was God's protection for me. If I felt pain I'm not sure how I would have made it."

It was eerily quiet. She strained to hear a sound but heard nothing.

"I kept blocking time out because I knew I could be there for days. I said, `Lord, I don't think you'll let me lay here until I die."'

Then - she is not sure how much time had elapsed - she heard voices.

A man shouted, "This is the child-care center and we've got lots of children in here!"

Another man shouted, "We're going to get you out!"

With those voices, Salyers knew she was going to be all right. But the day-care center was on the second floor. Could the voices be coming up through a vent?

A five-story drop

What Salyers didn't know was that she had fallen five stories. She was buried just below ground level, and, miraculously, alive.

She thought of her son.

"I'm supposed to pick up Josh at school and there's no way to call him."

She heard another voice. It sounded surprised.

"There's someone alive!"

A man grabbed her left hand.

"What's your name?" he asked. He was a firefighter.

She clasped his hand and shouted her name.

"She's alert. She's got a good grip," the firefighter shouted.

But they had only been working on her a short time when the firefighter said they had to leave. He said he needed to get a tool. The truth was, rescuers were being evacuated for fear of another bomb.

Salyers begged. "Please don't leave."

The firefighter's voice cracked as he said, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Left alone, Salyers became angry. Using her free left hand, she frantically scratched at the chunks of concrete and insulation. She felt a lump below her chest and reached down for it and grabbed hold.

It was a hand. She pulled. It came too easily. She held an arm, severed at the elbow.

"That's when I realized there were other people," she said, "and I started praying for them that they didn't suffer."

She did not let go. She clutched the hand and severed arm. It did not seem grotesque. It made her feel as if she was not alone.

Joe Mitchell

Joe Mitchell was miffed. He never could remember the date of his wife's birthday.

They had come together to the Social Security office.

"I was applying for my retirement checks and I had a 9 o'clock appointment," he said. "My wife, Lee, and I stopped at the reception room to wait for an agent. He came and got me and Lee decided she'd just sit in the reception area and wait for me."

Mitchell, a stocky man with a fleshy face, followed the agent through the door and down a hallway lined with little offices. They stopped at one, and Mitchell sat down and started filling out forms.

"I needed my wife's birthday and I forgot it, so I got up and started back down the hallways to get my wife."

Halfway to the reception area, "something boomed," he said. "I thought maybe lightning struck a wire. Maybe I had been struck by lightning. When I got up, I didn't know what was going on. . . . Something was coming down my face and I knew it was blood. I took a handkerchief, but I couldn't keep the blood out of my face. I could feel water coming up around my ankles. My one eye was injured, and with my good eye I could see a light."

Walls had caved in. Wires twisted and ran everywhere and dust ran up his nose.

"A woman came running by me. She was scared and crying and running and I said, `Don't run so fast. You'll get hurt.' It was dark."

Brian Espy

When Dr. Brian Espy got up that morning, he pulled on a cherished, brownish-orange suede jacket that his wife, Evelyn, teases him about. She says it's about 10 years out of style. At 57, Espy figures it suits him.

He's been the veterinarian in charge of USDA veterinary services in Oklahoma since 1989, and with the department for 27 years.

He left his home northwest of the city just after seven. Taking four-lane highways all the way in and encountering light traffic, he arrived in just 20 minutes.

When he got to his office on the fifth floor on the northeast end of the Murrah building, a few of the eight other employees had arrived. He walked to the office coffee pot and filled his black and white mug with a handle shaped like a Holstein - a souvenir of a trip two years ago to Lancaster, Pa. Then he sat at his desk and did a few chores.

He wrote a memorandum to an employee and phoned two others. First thing in the morning is the best time to catch USDA employees who work out of their homes in rural Oklahoma. A colleague from another department stopped by with some papers and they visited.

At about 8:30, Espy realized that he had a free hour. He decided to use the time to work on a slide presentation for the graduating veterinary class at Oklahoma State University.

So he left his office and walked down a long hall to a conference room at the southeast corner of the building, sat at a table and started projecting the slides onto a screen on the south wall, taking notes as he arranged them in the carousel.

He doesn't recall whether he had the lights on. Nor does he recall hearing the blast.

Rumbling, then collapse

"There was a lot of rumbling," he said, "but no particular sound that I can remember distinctly."

Then everything started caving in. He crawled partway under the conference table. First, ceiling tiles rained down. Then the entire frame holding the ceiling collapsed. Pipes fell in above him.

He would notice later that something - falling glass or metal shards - had sliced through his jacket and shirt. It left a two-inch gash in his back.

Then the shaking stopped.

"Everything quit falling, and then it became very, very quiet. Very still," he said. "I realized nothing else is falling. I need to see if I can crawl out from under this rubble."

He noticed that there was exposed wiring all around him - "Human nature is strange, but what I was thinking then was how ridiculous it would be to have survived this and then to be electrocuted."

Looking toward what had been the west wall, he saw nothing but sky. He saw a co-worker from another department and the co-worker's secretary moving about. He got up, climbed across the conference table and walked through what had been a wall, toward them.

The three of them were on a sort of platform about 15 feet wide and 25 feet long.

"There was a five-story drop between us and the stairwell. We looked to the west, and there was no floor. Where my office had been, there was no floor. Then, we heard the sirens."

Police Sgt. John Avera

Police Sgt. John Avera was expecting a backbreaking day. He had been detailed to help move equipment from the old serology lab into the new one. So instead of his usual uniform, he was wearing a black police T-shirt and blue jeans, a police baseball cap, and his gun strapped to his waist.

At 47, Avera was a 25-year veteran. He had grown pudgy around the middle and no longer was used to this kind of labor. Normally, he collected evidence, taking swabs from rape victims and keeping track of drugs confiscated in busts. He was having coffee when he heard the blast.

"I thought the police station got blown up," he said.

He rushed outside, saw black smoke and took off at a dead run. When he reached the federal building, he leaped into the rubble and began pulling people out. The first three were adults. One's scalp had been ripped back, exposing the skull. Another hobbled on a broken leg. He steered them down toward the street, where ambulances and fire engines were arriving.

Avera turned and went back in, pausing at a gushing broken water pipe to rinse blood from his hands.

He crawled through the splintered concrete, wriggling down into the basement. It was pitch dark, he had no flashlight and could hear voices. Women's voices. One shouted, "Get me the hell out of here!"

As he headed for the voices, just below him he heard a baby's cry. He stopped and began to dig until he unearthed a child. He held the little body limp in his arms and ran from the building looking for anybody wearing the orange and yellow suit of a firefighter. He saw Chris Fields.

Fields, 30, is a captain in charge of Engine Company 5. He is a 10-year veteran with a 2-year-old son. His crew mates heard the explosion and felt the blast at the station 13 blocks away. They didn't wait for the dispatcher to call, but roared to the scene, following the black smoke.

He had been there for 20 minutes, helping survivors get to paramedics on the sidewalks, when he saw Avera running toward him with the baby in his arms.

"This one's critical," Avera shouted, handing the baby to the firefighter.

As he ran to the paramedics with the child, Fields checked her pulse and felt nothing. He pulled building insulation and other debris from her mouth to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

A massive blast

The blast was felt 30 miles away. The crater gouged out of pavement at ground zero was wide enough to swallow a city bus, deep as a diving pool - and rapidly filling with water from a shattered underground main.

A bite had been taken out of the front of the building. Jutting from concrete columns blown away by the bomb, the steel reinforcement bars were bent sharply south. Flaps of rubber sheet roofing and the building's electronic entrails dangled down over its gutted remains. Massive slabs of its nine concrete floors lay shuffled like a deck of cards.

In the middle, heaped with the stuff of walls, floors and ceiling, were pieces of bodies and whole bodies of men and women and children flung instantaneously from life to death, now just awful bits in a mountain of the everyday - phones, desks, chairs, lamps, watercoolers, framed pictures, computers, calendars, printers, copiers, refrigerators, coffee makers, files. Also in the funneled spill were coloring books and toys from the second-floor child-care center. High up, a hanging plant rocked undisturbed from the window frame of an office now gone.

Glass shattered on every building for nearly a mile to the north, 312 buildings in all. More than two dozen had structural damage. In high-rise apartments one block west, drapes flapped in hollow frames up all 20 floors.

Smoke blackened the low skyline. Cars up and down Northwest Fifth Street were charred husks, their hoods peeled back like can lids.

The yellow Ryder truck

It is strange how something as simple as a man about to ask for directions will stay in a person's mind. That was what the meter maid on Northwest Fifth Street thought the driver of the yellow Ryder truck was about to do on the morning of April 19: stop and ask for directions.

But the man didn't stop. He drove past her. It was not yet 9 a.m.

It is not always easy to find a parking space in front of the federal building early on a workday morning. Plenty of folks have business in the building, and Oklahoma City wakes up early.

Investigators figure the truck may have had to circle the block before a metered spot opened up. At some point shortly before 9 a.m., the truck's driver found a spot just five parking spaces away from dead center of the Murrah building.

On the bed of the 25-foot truck somebody had arranged perhaps two dozen blue, plastic 55-gallon drums. Each one was packed with a mix of gray ammonium nitrate fertilizer and diesel fuel. Somebody had made a bomb.

Blasters call it ANFO for ammonium nitrate and fuel oil. At detonation, ANFO produces a huge fireball and shock wave when the ammonium nitrate breaks down into an oxygen-nitrogen compound and combines with volatile methane, acetylene, propane and carbon from the diesel fuel.

The bomb probably was set off by a safety fuse, a quarter-inch cord of black powder wrapped in a waxy covering. Based on the cord's burning rate, the time of the explosion can be calculated by cutting the cord to a certain length.

The safety fuse is the most straightforward but also the most disquieting means of setting off a charge. You light it, then get away fast.

Authorities estimate the truck was parked no more than four minutes before the explosion.

When the bomb ignited, the escaping gases filled the interior of the truck to a pressure more than 10,000 times higher than normal. The vehicle was obliterated.

The undercarriage, axle and bumper plunged downward into the expanding crater. They hit bottom, then catapulted back up the crater walls and were propelled skyward.

The bumper flew like a javelin over the four-story Water Resources building. The rear axle crashed to earth 500 feet away.

Gases roared out from the exploding truck. They erupted into a 4,000-degree fireball fed by the chemicals from the fertilizer and diesel fuel. The fireball triggered a blast wave that scooped up ambient air and rolled it into a gathering storm.

The bloated blast wave hurtled along the path of least resistance - the pocket of dead air along the sidewalk between Northwest Fifth Street and the Murrah building.

Emergency response

Like the bomb, the first damage assessments escalated progressively, from smoke to injuries to walking wounded to missing babies. Frantic calls flowed into the city's 911 emergency response system:

"We have a large column of smoke . . ."

"We've got several injuries downtown on an explosion."

"There's injuries all over the place downtown."

"The whole front of the federal building is gone . . ."

"I've got three patients that are in critical condition."

"We've got about four or five criticals right now and about a hundred walking wounded."

"Report numerous children on the second floor trapped. We need extrication crews up here."

"We are supposed to have at least 25 to 30 children in this area, and we have only found about four or five. Can we get heat sensors or police dogs, please?"

Baby Baylee Almon

Late on the day of the blast, Sgt. John Avera got word that the baby he had dug out of the building had survived. The baby was a girl. He was excited, and was looking forward to meeting her. But five minutes later, he was told they had made a mistake. It was a baby girl, but she had died.

"A real high and a real crash," he said.

The tragic picture of Avera handing baby Baylee Almon's limp frame to firefighter Chris Fields would become one of the most famous taken on the day of the explosion. The two met with Baylee's mother the day after the explosion. "She wanted to know if the baby suffered," Avera said. "I told her the baby was either unconscious or dead."

The survivors

Brian Espy is afraid of heights. He was terrified when he found himself standing with two dazed co-workers on a ledge.

Live videotape just 90 minutes after the blast captured the image of the lanky veterinarian being coaxed out to a firefighter's ladder. He did a cautious crab crawl to the ladder, wrapping his hands around its rails, trying not to look down.

"Some folks have tried to call me a hero," he said. "I'm not a hero. I'm a survivor. I told that fireman who helped me down that the camera should have been focused on him, not me."

Seven people in his Department of Agriculture office are dead. If he had not gone back to work on his slides, Espy is convinced he would have perished, too.

"I will always marvel that fate or God put me there instead of at my desk or walking around the office," he said. "But it's like Billy Graham said, we cannot ask why."

Espy's five children and 10 grandchildren all have visited or called since the bombing, just to touch him, to hear his voice.

He never found his Holstein coffee mug from Lancaster.

"I told him we're going to have to go back up there to get another one," said his wife, Evelyn.

Joe Mitchell never found his wife, Lee.

With his good eye, he followed the light, limping through the rubble until rescue workers grabbed him and steered him free.

Priscilla Salyers lost track of time after the firefighters left. She clung to the severed arm and prayed.

And the firefighters came back. One held her hand the whole time they worked to free her. Using heavy tools, they lifted the heavy concrete on her head and freed her from a heavy piece of wire wrapped around her right leg.

She let go of the hand when they twisted her out of the wreckage and for the first time, she felt sharp pain. She had suffered a punctured lung and broken ribs. They pulled her free and turned her over. She could see daylight above her, and the debris.

"It looked like stalactites and stalagmites," she said.

She was placed on a board, carried to an ambulance and taken to St. Anthony's Hospital. From an ambulance window, she could see the devastated remains of the Murrah building. Her co-workers Ice and Medearis didn't make it.

Salyers was released from the hospital five days after the explosion. She told her story from an easy chair in her living room in a small ranch home in Oklahoma City. Her forehead scraped and scabbed, she clutched a teddy bear. One had been given to each family at April 23rd's memorial service.

Last Friday she made a brief visit to the building site. She went to see friends who worked in the adjacent courthouse and post office. "I needed to see their faces," she said.

Of Timothy J. McVeigh she said: "I don't even think about him. It's not going to change what happened."

This article and the profile of Timothy McVeigh on the preceding two pages were reported by Philadelphia Inquirer staff writers Daniel LeDuc, Jeffrey Fleishman, Terence Samuel, Larry Copeland and Dan Meyers in Oklahoma City; Carol Morello and Vanessa Herron in Junction City, Kan.; Michael Matza in Wichita, Kan.; Michael Vitez and David Taylor in Decker, Mich.; Jodi Enda in Kingman, Ariz.; Robin Clark in Muscoy, Calif.; Steve Goldstein in Washington, D.C.; and Fen Montaigne in Pendleton, N.Y. They were written by Mark Bowden and David Zucchino.