President George W. Bush looks at a photo of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing at the Oklahoma City National Memorial February 19, 2001. The President attended the dedication ceremony of the memorial. White House Photo by Paul Morse
Posted on 04/19/2005 4:20:21 AM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
Apr 19, 2005 5:16 am US/Central
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP)
A moment of silence, one second for each victim. On each chair, a yellow ribbon.
Political leaders, survivors and victims' family members planned to gather Tuesday for a ceremony at the site of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, 10 years after it was destroyed in the worst act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
Vice President Dick Cheney and former President Bill Clinton also were scheduled to speak at the event commemorating the deadly attack on American soil. Clinton was president when Timothy McVeigh's truck bomb blew off the north side of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, killing 168 people and injuring hundreds more.
McVeigh was convicted of federal conspiracy and murder charges and executed on June 11, 2001. Conspirator Terry Nichols is serving multiple life sentences on federal and state charges.
Jenny Parsley, who seldom visits the memorial on the grounds of the destroyed federal office building, planned to attend Tuesday's ceremony. The memorial site consists of 168 chairs that represent each person who died in the blast.
"I knew most of the people killed," Parsley said. "I lost a lot of good friends, too many."
Her decision to go in late on April 19, 1995, saved her from the blast that killed 35 people in the Housing and Urban Development office where Parsley worked.
"My workday began at 7 a.m. and I had a doctor's appointment at 10 a.m., so I could have worked for almost three hours, but for some reason I decided to go in after my appointment," she said. "I got up early that morning and got dressed and got ready to go to work and just decided not to go."
McVeigh's fertilizer and fuel-oil bomb went off at 9:02 a.m.
Parsley, 57, was driving her car and noticed thick black smoke over downtown. She thought it was a fire at a tire plant until she turned on the radio and heard that it was the federal building.
She drove to her husband's office and discovered that her college-age son also was there. Both her husband and son thought she was in the building when the bomb exploded.
"They were crying," she said. "When I got there, I just fell apart."
Parsley and fellow employees returned to work at a different building in Oklahoma City. When the new federal building was dedicated last year, near the bombing site, Parsley took early retirement.
Joseph Allbaugh, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was chief of staff for then-Texas Gov. George Bush during the Oklahoma City bombing. Allbaugh, a Blackwell native who lived and worked in Oklahoma City for 17 years, said he lost a lot of friends in the bombing.
"Yes, it was a terrible day," he said. "We will always celebrate those 168 lives and you'll be glad to know the city and the state have rebounded ... Life does go on."
Jon Hansen, an assistant fire chief at the time of the blast, was preparing for a meeting at a fire station five blocks west of the federal building when the bomb went off.
"It shook our building," he said. "We looked to the east and saw an enormous mushroom cloud.
"We drove toward the building and I'll never forget how when we topped the hill with the sun low in the east, the street and sidewalks just glistened with broken glass."
President George W. Bush looks at a photo of the Oklahoma City Murrah Federal Building bombing at the Oklahoma City National Memorial February 19, 2001. The President attended the dedication ceremony of the memorial. White House Photo by Paul Morse
Hard to believe it's been 10 years.
I see Clinton's returning to the scene of the crime.
You can bet Clinton will make some snide remarks again about how "the far right" was responsible for this. He will try to lump in Republicans, Rush, and other conservatives with the lunatic fringe. He did it 10 years ago. Many in the media did that too, and it infuriated me.
How in the hell can a fertilzer bomb take out a good chunk of a building??
A fertilizer bomb destroyed much of Texas City in '47.
I didn't know that..
Fuel oil/fertilizer combinations are among the most powerful explosives known. That is one reason they are preferred by terrorists.
That's three.
Easy. There were charges placed on the interior concrete columns that hold the structure up, (by persons unknown), and were set off nearly simultaneously with the truck charge. Look at the picture and note the unevenness of what was left standing. A truck bomb would have left a semicircular pattern of damage, not a sawtooth one. Also note that the undamaged side of the building has intact windows, which would have been blown out if the charge in the truck was itself sufficient to breach the columns. Also note that bomb crater in the street is to the right of the building and the most damage is down the street on the left side of the building. That defies the laws of physics. The most casual observer can discern from the various photos that one truck bomb was not the cause of all that damage. The clintoon govt has a lot of explaining to do.
I see Clinton's returning to the scene of the [his] crime.
While causing such little damage to the building across the street.......
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