Transcripts For CSPAN3 Reel America Managing Terrorism Events - The Oklahoma Experience - 1996 20240713

With regard to this proceeding basically there are four elements that i have to receive information regarding [ explosion ] everybody get out of here now. A Federal Building has been blown up. Holy cow. [ sirens ] welcome to the Emergency Education network. Tonight live from Oklahoma City, managing terrorism events the oklahoma experience. And now your host ken hines. Good evening and welcome to the Emergency Education network. Im ken hines. Your host for this broadcast which is come towing live from a Firefighters Memorial museum in Oklahoma City, oklahoma. Now the topic of this broadcast is managing terrorist events, the oklahoma experience. Tonight were focusing on a serious playing that seems to be spread rag paidly across the globe and affecting every nation including our own. It appears in strikes without warning and leaves a trail of anger, fear and frustration in its path. Its name, its called terrorism. A word that has been ringing in our ears all too frequently of late. Oklahoma city, oklahoma is a city that just over a year ago experienced the devastation of mammoth proportion as a massive truck bomb explode and ripped apart the murrah Federal Building in the downtown area. This violent act of terrorism killed and injured hundred of innocent victims and caused severe property damage. Emergency personnel and Law Enforcement and officers from every corner of the country worked around the clock in and around the remains of the Federal Building to extricate survives, and search for clues for the cause. Now it seemed as though the entire nation stood still. Holding its breath as each hour passed watching as the death toll continued to climb trying to comfort the families and the friend of those locked inside the rubble. This tremendous tragedy of violence and lost lives in Middle America is one well not soon forget. Well start tonights program with an overview of the initial response by representatives of Oklahoma Citys fire, police, ems and public works. Now we will learn from these departments how cooperation was not only required but vital between response and enforcement personnel as this disaster soon became a crime scene. Our focus will move on to look one year later at the aftermath and what weve learned and how we can become better prepared as a result of this terrible, the terrible emergency. Now well hear from federal authorities and Technical Response trainers from virginia as they describe how processes and procedures and training initiatives have changed nationwide. And, of course, as always youll have an opportunity to speak directly to our presenters during two call in sessions tonight and share your views and opinions with them. Now were very, very fortunate to have with us a group of experts who were the first on the scene after this terrible bombing incident occurred. The first 12 hours were the most critical in regard to the initial response and caring for the injured. First let me welcome Oklahoma City fire chief morris. Hell give us an overview what his Fire Companies encountered on the scene and how it was handled. Chief moremorris, welcome. April 19th of 95 certainly started out as a typical spring day in oklahoma. Warm and sunny. And the explosion occurred. You see that this picture here is indicative of the type of debris that was laying around the murrah building and be encounter. First crews coming out of station one were approaching this scene from the west, and as was the Incident Commander also coming out of the station. This is indicative of what they were finding in the streets. See a lot of debris out of the building, briefcases, office equipment. Wren countering a lot of walking wounded which inhibited the response coming down the street. We found many damaged buildings and many as i mentioned walking wounded coming up. Started stopping some of the companies before it got up to the murrah building so we had a staggered response coming in. We had a lot of other buildings damaged also. We had, as you can see in this picture smaller buildings in the foreground, the Water Resources building received Severe Damage and some of the ones that were first seen. The Regency Tower residential complex you see in the background also had a lot of people coming out of it, evacuating that building. You see the smoke from the car fires parking lot across the street inhibiting the view and blocking some of the view as was the dust from the explosion itself. All the fires that we had a were in the parking lot, the cars that were on the fire. No fire in any of the building that morning. All the fire was within the first 30 minutes or so until we could get those car fires extinguished and the remainder of our operations were rescue and recovery operations. One of the first things we did we had so many structures damaged and had people in them that sweat up the incident command system to where each of the buildings was a separate division rather than setting up a different command for a different command system for each building we worked under one incident command and set the different building as a division. We had a murrah division and a regency division and so on and so forth. Some of the initial searchandrescue certainly involved the floor areas that were Still Standing in the murrah building. Here you see a picture where the rescue operations on the north fafts building. You see 135foot aerial working the east of the building. There was a 94foot platform. A 130foot aerial came up between two. We had two apparatus working the front of the building and rubble pile. We had numerous people that could free theirselves or we gottfried very easily could make it off the south side of the building down a stairwell that remain intact so we had a lot of walking wounded. But all of the north side rescues were taking off this aerial apparatus. Our command post area was at 6th hearn via which is one block north of the murrah building. Seeing this picture that some of the agencies are trying to organize here the congressman posts and operations that were going on here. And set up here. Some of the hanging debris and rubble that were being cleared in that first day, i think we have another slide coming up here. This is pretty typical of the hanging debris in the building that was certainly presenting a hazard. Some of the rescues that were taking place on the rubble pile in front of the building, we had one of the civilian rescuers a nurse was structure by something falling off one of the floors, she was working the rubble pile and died later in the hospital. But the initial sear searchandrescue of the building came off the pile and main floors. We addressed long term issues, starting to worry about the we knew we would go in at night looking at lighting, food, sanitation problems for the long term aspect of it. Also fanning ic system into logistics and finance. We knew, later in the day we had urban searchandrescue teams coming in. Logistics area. We started working towards emergency procurement procedures to get supplies and things that we need. That we knew we would need in that long term operation. Then by night fall, the first teams arrived on the scene and started working, coordinating with them. As you can see in this slide here we also had heavy storms and high winds move in. I mentioned the at the start of this morning, it was a warm sunny day, pretty typical spring day in oklahoma. Went to thunderstorms and tornado warnings that night and that was pretty typical of the operations over the next two weeks. Very good. Thanks, chief. Well visit with the you later on. We heard the Fire Departments perspective and how they initiate a response effort. Lets turn our attention the Law Enforcement division and examine how this branch organized its response activity necessary. Here is oklahomas chief of police sam gonzalez. Thank you for being here. Thank you. The responding police units, the spi first respondents had three cousins they could choose. First go in the building and rescue people. As you can see from this slide the water main inside the building had burst. Inside was very hazardous to be in. We identified over 70 of our First Responders who went into the building to assist in the rescue of the injured and the recovery of the bodies. Secondary objective of those responding was the transportation of the injured. As chief morris had said for blocks around the streets were filled and lined with people who were injured. We have identified over five police cars that were used in the transporting and we can bring up the next slide, we have identified over five of our vehicles that were used in the transporting of over 30 of the victims to the closest hospital to us which was Saint Anthonys hospital. So certainly the rescue of the injured, the transportation of those victims into the hospital. The third objective and one of the most important was the immediate control of our streets so that we could have access but later responding emergency equipment to be able to get to the scene. We have a slide depicting the control of our streets. This is very early on. We found from Historical Perspective that its very important for emergency equipment to be able to get to the location. The next thing we had to do then is find a way to establish a command center that was going accommodate all the Law Enforcement personnel that was necessary. This slide shows you that weve got National Guard personnel there, we dot the department of Public Safety flerm and in the background, Law Enforcement and Fire Command Center throughout this entire operation. The last slide that i have shows the size of our perimeter. We collected evidence and had evidence inside of 20 square blocks. When he an extremely large crime scene perimeter. It took about 450 Law Enforcement officers on a daily basis just to maintain our perimeters. We had help from the oklahoma highway patrol, the Sheriffs Office and other agencies within our state came in to assist us. Chief well be back with you also later on in the show to talk more specifically what did you. Also joining us is dr. Maginnis, and doctor, ems critical. Give us your overview about your initial response. I brought some footage which may help illustrate the ems response. Within minutes massive emergency medical response was initiatived. If i could please have that film. The first call came in at 9 03. Even before this call came in at 9 03, paramedics began to arrive on the seen. Between 9 02 and 9 05, several ambulances, emts converged on the scene. They came from the north and south. From the north they came from Saint Anthonys hospital. The first ambulance was in the process of unloading a patient at the time. When the paramedic felt the blast, gravitated towards the smoke. Heading south on robinson, excuse me on harvey until made it to the northwest corner of the building where he was essentially overtaken by huge numbers of people both injured and uninjured. He was followed by his supervisor who stopped at the corner of 6th hearn via where the Fire Department established their command post. Two other ambulances came from the north. One was in the process refueling and the other manned by paramedics who were being taught advanced life support at the time. They stopped at the corner of 6th and robinson not knowing the federal build hydrogen been involved because of the smoke that had been streaming in the skies from the car fires located in the parking lot across the street from Federal Building. There are four other ambulances that came from the southwest. From the fleet mainland facility three went to the western side of the building and fourth to the eastern side of the building, accompanied by a supervisor. Finally this first ems response the casualty count continued to swell on into the streets. You can roll it, please. 9 08 the first triage stationed was started. Ambulances awaited receipt of patients. Each ms was located. Way in was southbound robinson and way out is eastbound 6th street. Following the bliemt establishm this triage area, paramedics manned by ambulances manned by off duty paramedics. 12 ambulances in other parts of the city at the time of the blast. At 9 10 paramedics began to arrive at the Fleet Maintenance facility. At 9 15 there was a page for all off duty paramedics to return to duty. Ambulance from other parts of the city converged on the scene. Can you roll that, please . They came from all directions. From the north and the southeast they converged on the initial triage area from the south and southwest converged on the western side of the building. By 9 25 most of the ambulances resources were depleted. So at 9 25 a call for mutual aid went out and between 9 25 and 10 3014 other municipalities sent in an additional 20 units if i can have that, please. Again, these units converged in all directions. By the end within that first hour and a half there were 66 ambulances that would arrive on the scene. 34 from Oklahoma City. Three from tulsa. And 29 from mutual aid municipalities. They transported over 100 patients that first hour. 32 would have serious injuries. Majorlacerations about the face and neck. 20 had moderate injuries and 15 were walking wounded. This evacuation of the initial stream of patients theres a new concern. There was indication the maximum occupancy of the building during normal Business Hours was approximately 900. There was fear there were hundreds of patients still trapped in the building. There was a necessity to move the triage area next to the building itself. The triage area was moved at 10 21 to the Northeast Corner of the building. Way in and out was circuitous because of a charge across robinson avenue that had been used to put out fires in the parking lot. At 10 29, the Disaster Response was changed from that point forward. May i have that, please . At 10 29 the first bomb threat occurred. Exact nature of the bomb threat was not known. All rescuer and medical personnel were told they were to stop all they were doing and to immediately evacuate the area. This photograph is taken from the Regency Tower facility looking at the north base of the building. You can see that the streets are empty and the fire apparatus is abandoned. Next slide, please. This caused the ems sector to push to the east. The triage area was located at the Railroad Tracks on 6th street. The staging areas were pushed to the north and south. Next slide. At 10 50 there was a second bomb athle threat. Next slide. This pushed much back even farther. Triage area was pushed back to 6th street and harrison at the location of an abandoned warehouse. Within minutes that warehouse was turned into a field hospital. It was capable prove providing initial stabilization in the event area hospitals became overloaded. Next slide, please. During the next few hours it became apparent there were not going large number of patients that were is going be taken from the building alive. Therefore, at 3 30 the staging area traiage area was moved to the southern part. In the first hour and a half, 139 patients were transported, 95 by emsa, 44 by mutual aid. Over 200 were transported by other means, police, van, pickup truck. 422 patients seen in 17 area hospitals that day. 389 were injured. 89 would be admitted to the hospital. Of those that were transported, we only had six fatalities. One was dead on arrival. Two died in the emergency department. Three died from complications related to multiple injuries. Very good, doctor. Thank you very much for being with us. Bob ricks is a Information Special agent in charge of oklahoma with the federal bureau of investigation. Hes currently the director of oklahomas department of Public Safety. Also with us is paul broom, the director of public works and city jeer for Oklahoma City and he supervises five divisions with over 580 employees. All of whom were involved in Recovery Efforts in 1995. By the way, paul was selected as one of the top ten public work directors in north america. Gentlemen welcome. A great deal to discuss. I guess one of the questions that we brought bob and paul in would be massive event before we went on the air we talked about when the fbi respond. Very quickly after the emergency. Lets talk first about that Law Enforcement intercooperation. You two knew each other. Bob, lets start with you. What did you do when your agents were initially deployed . Initially my agents were deployed directly to the scene even before i arrived. They were assisting in the rescue mission as the initial response as well, and starting to, dont duct some preliminary evidence gathering and looking at where perimeters were. When i arrived i tried to seek out sam gonzalez, the chief police. Decisions we made on the scene at that moment that would pretty much solidify what we would do in future. Sam also was looking for me at the time. Sam fortunately and i had attended various schools back at the fbi, we knew each other on a personal level as well as professional level. And if theres one thing i could stress is that its not a time to develop a relationship after a bomb goes off. You must have that relationship developed beforehand. And in the case with sam gonzalez and myself we already had that. Sam because of his prior training at the Fbi National Academy as well as other advanced management schools had to have training with regard to terrorism and understood what the fbis role was in regard to such incidents. Sam, when he and i got together said, bob, this looks like its obviously a terrorist incident, and under the guidelines that are in existence primarily the responsibility of the fbi. We will give you every bit of assistance that you need but we understand that the criminal investigation must rest in your hand and i appreciated that. We had that agreement and that pact from the beginning. After that we both went together to search out the chief of the Fire Department, gary morris, and we had also had a previous relationship through various groups that we belong, to same type of groups where we did benefits for fire and police as well as we knew each other on a professional and social basis. So, again, gary morris indicated that he would be there to assist whatever had to be done, but it was at that moment because of the nature what existed, the capacity, we said the primary focus official had to be the searchandrescue mission. We can obtain evidence later. But we needed to set up perimeters, secure the inner and outer perimeter. But let nothing interfere with that rescue mission and that was the agreement we had with gary from beginning. Its important to note for the view terrifies fbi did not have its offices in this Federal Building . Thats correct. We were about ten miles away from where the explosion took place. We were in a kmacommercial offi building. How many agents were deployed . We had approximately 70 fbi agents in the Oklahoma City area and the entire office did respond. At least in one fashion or another. We also had to maintain a command center at the main office as well. Within the first 24 hours we probably had another 200 fbi agents that respond the area. So that also creates a logistics problem. Have 200 or so other people who are coming to town. You have to find space. You have to find cars. You have to find telephones. You have to equip people who are coming to the field office, oftentimes with nothing other than their person. Soerp close enough in the vicinity that they drove and brought materials with them. But in some cases we had agents arriving from throughout the country who were only bringing their person and we had to fully equip these people. I know its chaotic trying to get a grass. Of whats occurring. What were you looking from the fbi . The murrah building housed several federal agencies. It was important for us to establish that fbi would be the lead agency to do the investigation and other federal agencies knew our coordination was going and through fbi. We had a personal relationship. We had a working relationship. It made it extremely easy for us to accomplish. The same with chief morris. We got together in the Oklahoma City motor home about 10 45 so iv 50 that morning along with our mayor and established some guidelines, areas of responsibility, set up sometimes to go public and have our first press conference, and from there things fell in place pretty well. Paul, were not ignourg. A lot of people may not realize an operation of this magnitude from the discussions we had here calls for a lot more players than the initial Emergency Responders, fire, police and ems. Paul, lets talk a little bit about what Oklahoma City public works did providing portable toilet, barricades. What was your initial when did you get the initial call and what transparent first things your organization did . Our First Response as some of my supervisors were there within minutes after the bomb went off. They utilized their pickup to take the walking wound in the hospital. Then in turn bring doctors and nurses and equipment back to the bomb site while they were awaiting on the barricade crews. As soon as the bomb went off i made calls to my barricade people and asked them to head toward the site. Within about 10 or 15 minutes we had barricade crews en route that were there to support the Police Department in trying to take care of the perimeter, to keep the people how to that shouldnt in the area. That raises an interesting point that we discussed earlier in the day, doctor, one of the things we saw on television is this massive response of volunteers, doctors, nurses. I dont know whether the media requested doctors and nurses. Off Duty Police Officers from all over oklahoma. Firefighters. Everybody came. Lets talk specifically about ems, the problems that presented for you. This incident was unique. It was located in two miles of five major hospital, Saint Anthonys and press by the terrifyian. Because of that physicians and nurses initially went to the Emergency Departments. Soon the Emergency Departments them self were inundated. Saint anthony indicated they had approximately 1,000 medical volunteers poised to offer medical assistance. Then there was some unsolicited requests on behalf of the media that for anybody with any type of medical training to go to the Federal Building itself and indeed they went. The problem was with that was these medical volunteers converged on the scene were not part of the command system and were essentially unprotect and acted in an uncoordinated fashion. It was a two edged is sword. We needed assistance in evacuating people from the area. However as the chief indicated to me, when he later on told me that not only did he have the responsibility of his firefighters but those still trapped in the rubble but now as medical volunteers entered the Federal Building and the rubble pile they became his responsibility as well. And the list of the medical volunteers, one was struck on the head by debris and later died. One of the things that seems to he a common theme in Disaster Responses across the United States is initially those First Arriving police cars and ambulance, fire trucks are almost like a magnet for the walking wounded and often its not the walking wounded that dont need the care. Its the people that cant get to the ambulances. Chief, when the First Arriving unit arrived on the scene, First Engine Company what did doe . Did he put out a general alarm . What did he do . Our Incident Commander was responding from the same station that the first crews were. So the chief was table establish command very quickly and it wasnt necessary for one of the First Companies to do that. But youre correct the walking wounded, the streets were so clogged with not only the debris but crews. They had to go slowly when they would have to stop because of people or whatever. They got out the treat those people. They may have been minor but they seemed to be very, like as you said magnet. Other people saw firemen working on those. They would then come over and almost like they were starting to stack up there wanting to get treatment. Of course they are not going walk off and leave them at that point. Those first first crews were taken up by some of the walking wounded and so forth that were actually preventing us from getting up close to the building. From an ems standpoint was it a problem . Maybe problem is not the correct word. Was it a challenge to set up that triage area because you had such a massive amount of folks. A massive amount of people hurt and not hurt walking the streets. It was chaos. The incident command system was so important. One of the things i found kind of amazing talking to bob and sam here was that pretty early on you all are thinking that this is a crime scene, which were going skins our next segment but fire people are thinking your first thought natural gas explosion. Certainly. In your Fire Training youre going through some of those catastrophes that fire people think of whether its chemicals or bass build up or gas pipeline and trying to figure out out of those choices what it could have been. Speak with all five you sitting here, us a put your collective Heads Together that morning thinking back and theres a lot of Lessons Learned there in terms of things that you did right, things that you wish you might have modified just a little bit, is there anything that jumps out of a real success that you had . Obviously you had the relationships. Everybody knew everybody. Thats an important element. Bob, lets start with you. We had, i think, many successes, you know, when you consider the immensity of what occurred. One area, though, where we had a weakness early on, which was displayed pretty glaringly was our failure to communicate early on. We did not have a common band we could communicate and really had never thought of that. We worked joint exercises with the Police Department where we shared fbi radios and so forth. But as a general rule we work separately. In this case, those we usually thought that we could use cellula phones and because of the catastrophe that occurred all cells were locked up and we couldnt communicate. Literally we were having to meet on street koercorners. We would send runners lets meet at 6th and harvey and have a meeting. Technology jumped back 100 yard. Only way we could communicate was facetoface. This was corrected later in the afternoon. But during the Early Morning of the chaos as was described we really went back to a primitive form of communication. Sarjs lets m, lets go to y . I think probably the key was the relationship existing between the three players, between the fbi, the Fire Department and Police Department. I think looking back one of the things im proudest of that the Oklahoma City Police Department did is a lot of the early responders that took the initiative to set up street barriers and to stop the traffic and do some perimeter control when you know their hearts are let me go in the building, let me help somebody thats hurt. But knowing in the long run what we really needed to do was seize control of the perimeter. One of the things that we want to touch on here was the media. All right. This was as soon as it occurred it was going out over cnn and all the News Services that something had happened in Oklahoma City. Lets talk a little bit about what did you that was very positive in terms of dealing with the media very early on. The pool coverage, i believe. Well we were getting a lot of questions in later days on the slowness of what they thought was the slowness of the efforts and what was taking so long and why wasnt more progress being made and so on. We put together a tool extra Camera Network to where we took a representative from the broadcast immediate area print media, still photographer, radio, put them into what we call pool and took them down inside the building and walked them around, showed them what was going on, the operations going around. A shoring and bracing having to be done. Tremendous efforts that were being used to get people out of their trapped state and so on and that had a very positive impact because they were able to come back out one of the agreements was they had to come back out and share that information and film footage and Everything Else with their counterparts. They were able to come back out as the media and explain. What they saw and what was going on in there and they werent hearing it from somebody that they might have been skeptical of. Hit a very positive effect and i think it enlightened a lot of them. Paul lets go public works again. What did you have in place that functioned the way do you. We dont think of public works being involved in disastrous situations. Any time we have a disaster were a big player whether a tornado or a flood we know were going to have to be the ones to provide the heavy equipment notices assist the police or Fire Department. Not unusual for us to help the Fire Department with a hazmat operation. So, i was amazed at my personnel were taking the initiative because a lot of times when i would call for something i would find it was already on the way. One of those issues was lighting. When i called to say we need lights they said were taking care of it. So i found that happening a lot of times. I found that a lot of my people wanting to get involved that perhaps that they didnt need to be involved. So actually had told some of those people back moop very good. We heard from representatives of the core response groups explain how they organized their response efforts twin first 12 hours of the bombing incident. Next well take a look at how Response Teams worked in cooperation at the bomb site and how they quickly became, the site became a crime scene. Well be right back. Welcome back. For those of you who may just be joining us were in Oklahoma City speaking with the grouch experts that spearheaded the response efforts following the bombing of the measurea federur building in april of 1995. It was apparent this horrific disaster was also a crime scene. How does one continue a searchandrescue effort without disrupting any criminal evidence . How do personnel teams work as a unit to retrieve victims, brace and shore a bulling and remove bubble and debris without disturbing critical evidence. Here to tell us chief gary morris. After that first day that we discussed we settled into the long term rescue and recovery operations and it was very slow going. The type of debris and rubble was almost picking by hand and bringing up that debris out. As you can see in this photo here it was such a cooperative effort because on the back of the cover alls you fee firefighters from different scenes but you see fbi and dea on the cover alls. They were working sidebyside. Initially it started out as the firefighters to bring the rubble out in their searchandrescue activities while the Law Enforcement was looking at that and searching its towards evidence and personal belongings and so forth the. But it quickly evolved where everybody was pitching in there and bringing that rubble out in a very coordinated effort. We did a coordinated search of the building. You see in this picture here how one of the urban searchandrescue teams is work one specific spot. You had to coordinate all of this activity so that you were covering it in a very coordinated fashion and you were not going back and repeating certain areas. And bracing and shoring activities were something that was taking a longtime to do and certainly had to be very coordinated. Bob rich mentioned earlier the coordination and realizing searchandrescue was so important, we simply had to make sure that as fbi and the Law Enforcement people did their crime scene search and evidence recovery that we coordinated all that together so they werent off digging in part of a building that we werent aware of, the building was very unstable. Bracing and shoring was something that was taking us an awful longtime to do. Extremely slow due to the instability of the building. You had to be very careful. In this slide you can see three disdistinctive levels of bracing and shoring with concrete floors in between them. You see black steel pipes bracing between the columns. The columns were a concern for us because when they lose their floor connection they were very unstable. So when he to get those columns stabilized. We worked around the clock. Did 24 hour a day operations. In this photo its a nighttime shot but you can see how well lit the build is. The lighting system that was brought in, we had it very well lit. It took a lot of coordination also because the heavy machinery. Those large cranes we were using is not something you can pick up and move very easily. When you realize you had to move a crane, operations ceased for a while. As they need that heavy equipment we had to free up what we could and work with them and moving it and getting it repositioned took an lawful lot of time. One thing we stressed heavy in this incident, we started doing diffusing with other Critical Incident team the very first morning and set up a procedure to where all our people to go through diffusing before they do leave the site and we continued that through the whole operation. After the operation was over with some 17 days later we put everybody through mandatory debriefing sessions, the entire department. And because of these activities i think we certainly got a handle on the mental stress aspect of this incident and certainly lessened our impact of it. One of the key parts of the incident was what we call the macc center. It was a one room in the Marriott Convention center. It was staffed 24 hours a day. It became the one area that you could go to and get supplies, order, get them delivered. Get your questions answered. And worked out very well for us. The Marriott Convention center is where we have a number of the strike team and also became our center for feeding operations. Restaurant association was preparing for a convention there, which they had to cancel. But because of that they already had cooking facilities and food and stuff on hand and they started repairing meals that very first morning and they continued that throughout the entire operation. It had restricted access. Only volunteers and rescue workers were allowed in there and media and general public wasnt. Became a place for them to get away from a lot of that hectic activity that was going on. This is also where the volunteer from the Community Came out and made such a difference because there just wasnt anything that any of the people working down there wanted that they didnt get. Either out of the marriott or somewhere. And a lot of talk has gone on around the country about the oklahoma standard and the community caring. I believe that was set right down here in the Marriott Convention center because they had a tremendous response from the community and work with the rescue workers. We finished up activities on may 4th at 11 45 at night. We had work down to where we only had two victims unaccounted for. We thought when he a good idea where they were at in the remaining rubble. But yet in such a place that the stability of the building would not allow us to clear the area off. We ceased our operations that night. We sent a few words. Chaplain said a prayer and then whoenl. We had a closure service the next day on the site where we put the word out and leapt all the people that worked in that building or around that building or any activity work showed up the next day, because whatever closure they needed to this incident, they could bring their families down and then at the end of the closure service we turned that Building Back to the Police Department and ceased our operations. Thanks again, chief. Lets go to chief of police sam gonzalez. They were very much involved obviously with the next phase of the response which was securing evidence of the crime. Chief, what were southeast obstacles that your department faced or encountered in term of trying to keep the area secure and keep the media from, keep the media, keeping informed but keeping them using them as a tool. Ken, as i stated earlier, our crime scene was 20 square blocks. Once we established the perimeter, we had to make sure only those authorized were allowed in the crime scene. Not only do we have that problem but we have to make sure that the many, many businesses and residences and dwellings were safe and secure from people who may try to come and in do some looting or pick up souvenirs from the explosion. We did have large pieces of evidence to be collected within the 20 square blocks. This slide depicted the rear end out of the bomb vehicle. It was a block away. Witnesses said it sounded as a boomerang as it come down the street and impact the front of this red car. So large pieces of evidence within this 20 square blocks to collect. And as they were bringing the rubble off the building we had to sift through the rubble. And this slide depicted the police and secret service all with little yellow buckets as they collect debris from the building and take it down to a flat spot down in front of the building. Once the debris gotten to that point, they used rakes or sifting bins and would sift through all of the debris for the collection both of physical evidence of the crime and for personal property. During this process we collected over 440 individual cases of personal property that filled the back up two semi tractortrailers. All of this debris, once it was sifted through, was loaded in dump trucks and taken off site and resisted again to make sure we didnt lose any evidence or personal property. We also found out that we had cars across the street that were involved in the fire that may contain evidence of the explosion itself. We had teams of federal and local crime scene investigators who processed these cars. We had 82 vehicles that we processed in five days. And got them out of the way. Made the rest of the Recovery Efforts go a lot better. Also within this scene we had 432 personal cars that were left by the citizens when we established our perimeter and they could not get back into the crime scene to get cars out. We established a procedure where they could go to city hall and get a release on the vehicle and go to one of two predetermined locations. We were fortunate we have a recruit class at the time and the recruit would escort them to their car and escort them back out of the crime scene. Once again in an attempt to make sure that we kept the integrity of the crime scene going. Also with this large of a crime scene we would have hundreds of volunteers inside of the crime scene each day. We had to make sure that the people that were in there had access to be in there so we issued tags to these people. During the process, anybody that came on the scene, Law Enforcement personnel, Salvation Army, red cross, any of the volunteers, received an i. D. Tag and went through a process and verified they should be there and was then issued a tag. The background of the tag told you if you were looking at the amount of access to the crime scene that they had. A clear background was Law Enforcement, gave you access to anything. A red background was very restricted and you had to be escorted by someone. During the process we issued over 25,000 of these tags. We also had a problem in maintaining the integrity of the crime scene and making sure that we could get food in to the hundreds and hundreds of volunteers each day so we would have hot food. Ups, one of our very good corporate citizens came to our recognize. They have a very recognizable truck and a driver that wears a uniform and photo i. D. So they could make the deliveries of the food for us and we could maintain the integrity of the crime scene. I think the last thing i would talk about would be the media. We were very fortunate in that the Police Public Information Officer very early established the fact that we needed a location very close to the scene but one that we could isolate and he identified two square blocks and we secured them and put the media in that one location. The media represented a unique challenge in that the difference in the Organizational Culture of police and fire and Law Enforcement and disaster and crime scene and disaster were normally police try to keep media out of crime scenes and in disasters we need to document what were doing so Fire Department personnel needed media to come in and document what they were doing. So we had some early differences of how we handle the media that we worked through rather rapidly but i think it went real well. It was important we established the first day to get factual information out to the media. Until we could get factual information to them, the media, without factual knowledge, would go to the experts to determine this and as we all recall early on the experts determined it was mid easterners and caused quite a bit of consternation in the mid eastern community. Where it was mid westerners that were involved, allegedly involved in this. A point that was raised was that Oklahoma City, all of the division heads, Department Heads had been to the Emergency Management institute less than a year before for one of the integrated Emergency Management courses, with the mayor and police chief, ems, public works. Peter, lets start with that. Was that a good experience . Obviously it is a good experience going to emi, having been there a number of times but the pluses that came from that, did that give you an edge ahead of the start. I think it did solidify some personal relationships established prior to the disaster. The integrated Emergency Management course solidified the understanding of roles and responsibilities during a disaster and it was a tremendous experience for the city and i think it was integral to the success of the disaster operations. Paul, with you, public works, your crane operators dont travel in the same circles, might go by the Fire Department and see officers on the street. What about being included in this. What happened was that our dispatchers got to meet the dispatchers with the police and the Fire Department and they knew them on a firstname basis so it made it easy to make contact with those people and whenever they needed something from us, they werent bashful about calling and didnt care what they wanted. They just said we need it and it was our responsibility to see that it was there. That is great. Bob, from a criminal standpoint, a disaster scene and what they teach you in Law Enforcement academy is dont let people con t tamm tammin sate contaminate the scene. Were there any indicators given to the rescue people as to look for this. These are the things that were interested in or what were you looking for specifically, if you could tell us. We had evidence Response Teams throughout from the country and we would have supervisors looking at materials as they were brought out. Okay. And pretty quickly we could make a determination if had anything to do with the bombing or contained any bombingtype substances that needed to be tested. Fortunately for the bomb, what youre trying to do, youre trying trying to put back together the vehicle, as many components as you can, looking for identifying data and any bombing components that you may find and there are certain telltale signs that exist there. These are not items that are easily destroyed. Certain bombing materials, the components of the bombing material, they may be destroyed because of weather, rain, whatever, but the hardware is not going to be destroyed. So we werent worried about someone standing on a piece of evidence and destroying it or whatever, but we still had the same concerns and that is we had to maintain a chain of custody just like any other crime scene even though it was much larger in scope and we had many people involved in the process, ultimately we had to have an fbi agent or whoever was assigned to that particular task, sign off on that piece of evidence. We had to be able to identify exactly where that evidence was obtained, it had be initialed and followed and maintain the proper custody. So certain procedures had to be set up and it was made even more complex because it was the largest disaster for many of the agencies involved that they had ever encountered in the history of their agencies. So obviously they wanted to participate. And we could not without destroying longterm relations, exclude them from the investigation. So we had at times 20 and 30 different agencies that were participants in this investigation. Many rightfully so. So it was up to us to find a legitimate function for them to be in the investigation but at the same time the ultimate responsibility for the integrity of the investigation rested with the fbi. So it was somewhat complex to ensure we integrated into somewhat of a a unified command but still the ultimately responsibility had to reside with the fbi. Okay. Gary, something we talked about earlier also, great deal of discussions going on here prior to the show, was sam talked about a Police Department pio. You have a pio, fbi in charge, ems, public works might have a pio, there was not one spokesperson in this. Everybody took a turn and talked about their area of expertise. That is true. And i think it worked out very well. And i know a lot of courses teach one person speaking for the incident and so on but we found the way we worked it worked very well for us. And i think one of the key factors was we didnt have any of those ego or turf battles going on in Oklahoma City. We were also blessed with the political structure that didnt feel the need to be the lead people to stand up and talk a to try to lead the incident so hopefully what you saw in the National Press briefings what we did daily was you saw sam doing the police talk, you saw the bob do the fbi stuff and the mayor talked about the city and i talked about the fire rescue. And when questions came up that were not of, say, my area, i would make sure that was handed off to one of the others to answer. And that seems to work well. And then we also kept down close to the site, we kept representatives there 24 hours aday to answer those questions and with the media and do on the spot interviews and news breaks and so forth and make sure we tried to get the media people as much as they needed and worked with their schedules because wewe knew we were restricting them and we had to work with them well. Peter, lets go to an issue in Disaster Management is difficult to manage and that is accountability of victims. Finding out how many people were in the building, how many people were walking down the street and the buildings across the street, plus youre sending people to different hospitals by ambulance going in police cars. Was accountability of victims or number of victims an issue here initially. It was nearly impossible to do. Youre taught in disaster skills that use triage tags to appropriately identify the patient. There were just too many people who were too badly hurt to worry about triage tags as a primary priority. Our priority was to get the people out of the building and get them to a hospital. So it was very difficult to have an accurate number of how many patients were actually transported at any given time. We tried very hard to do that, to have a general idea, but certainly we didnt have accurate figures. One of the things they teach you in Disaster School is not to overload one particular hospital and i heard you mention earlier, i think you said seven hospitals were involved in this. 17 hospitals received 389 patients. Were you loading the ambulances . Were there more than two or three people per ambulance or utilizing buses . We tried to maintain no more than one critical patient per ambulance. At the most two patients or possibly three in some situations would go but never be more than one critical patient on a unit. Patients found different modes of transportation to the hospital. You heard chief gonzalez and that many went by vehicle and pickup truck and there was a story i heard from Saint Anthony that a individual with a brandnew corvette ferried patients to the hospital one by one. One of the things as we wrap up the segment, the phone calls that must have been coming to police, fire, ems. Im trying to find out about my loved one and that is something ive never heard addressed in terms of did you all get phone calls, did 911 operator get phone calls. Could you tell me what happened . Was there increase in phone calls at the 911 center. Quite a bit of increase in phone calls to 911. As best i recall during the first hour, there were about a thousand phone calls that we couldnt answer. We had so many phone calls coming in we just couldnt respond to all of them. One of the things we learned on a personal note is our Emergency Response team that responded, we match paged them and they would call our Communications Division to find out where to go. Well obviously they couldnt get in either. So luckily the Television Coverage was good enough they all went to the Training Center and we dispatched them from there. But it changes the method that we now do when we batch page out our emergency Response Teams. Very good. A lot more to talk about. Phone calls coming up in just a second. We heard how the Oklahoma City fire and Police Department were able to join together performing rescue and recovery within the crime scene area without disturbing evidence. When we return well look at how things have changed one year after the emergency and what future initiatives to expect for our response personnel. Please stay with us. Well, welcome back. We have discussed how operations were handled at the mura Federal Building disaster. And were going to talk once again, weve talked about a crime scene, and rescue efforts were balanced against that, maintaining and preserving the criminal evidence. Now well focus on the changes this brought to the various First Responders departments and what new procedures have been developed and what future initiatives we could expect. Chief marrs, lets start with you. What does you learn . If there is one thing you could tell people out there about what happened and what they should know, what would that be . Well, ive been asked that many times and i dont know that i could phrase it as a Lesson Learned so much as a lesson reinforced and that again goes back to the interagency communication and cooperation. I cant stress enough how important i think it was that, number one, the people had gotten together and talked and planned and trained together as you mentioned sometime before that. But if they dont get anything out of this other than one thing, they need to understand that one department, one agency cant handle these scene by themselves. It takes an effort by all of the different people doing what they do best and letting people do that and not trying to micromanage an incident or one agency try to micromanage an incident. So i think the lesson reinforced for us is you have to work and communicate and cooperate. I know that since the bombing incident, more than ever weve been doing training, weve been communicating, weve been getting Response Teams together not only with police and fire, fire and public works are doing a lot of initiatives now, public works people are getting involved in the rescue training and so on. So, again, it is just a lesson reinforced about that interagency cooperation. Paul, lets move to you. If you had one thing to pass along to public works or emergency serve people that you work with, what would that be after that emergency. The most important thing is get your emergency call list up to date. Though doesnt only cover your own personnel, but it must cover police and fire and Bell Telephone and my emergency list has contractor names and phone numbers down three levels of personnel and where they have equipment located within the city. Peter, what about you. There are two chings ththing weve changed. In case an event like this occurs again, that physicians and nurses will first go to the hospital and Emergency Departments. If operations feels that more medical volunteers are needed, they will go to a distant site located away from the incident and stage until theyre called for. The next thing is communications. We had a hospital emergency administrative radio frequency and because it fell into disrepair because emergency disasters dont happen every week, i believe over half or 75 of the hospitals here systems were norn functioning and weve had to go back and monitor and evaluate our Communications Hardware and put it back into service. Chief, how about you . I think if what bob said earlier, to me, was one of the very strong keys. And that is to have preexisting relationships between police and fire and the federal agencies. The middle of a crisis is not a place to do that. It is not a time to come in and say im sam gonzalez and you have to have those in place. I could see that from Oklahoma City state capitol. Would advice be the same for like a small bedroom community, 30,000 or 40,000. Probably even more so. Any time you have an incident of this magnitude, and if this wasnt a Federal Building it still would have been a act of terrorism. There is no way the Oklahoma City Police Department would have the resources to go to kansas and go to arizona what needed to be done. Our resources are just not there. You need the resources of the fbi and the federal government to do that and the resources of the Fire Department and the urban research and rescue and i think in training if there is one place we fall short it is the tact that the police and the federal Police Agencies train a lot together and we as a city train a lot together. But very seldom do we as a city and the federal Law Enforcement train together and i think that is the other perspective we need to bring in. That is a good plus for anyone, to contact a local phish or regional atf, any federal Law Enforcement agency and say this is who you are, just want to introduce myself. That is come out a number of times here. As we go through this, one of the things that people might ask is how was this paid for, what type of shifting did you use. I understand, chief, that initially ever firefighter in the city on duty was at this event and you back filled with Mutual Aid Companies. How long did that last and how did it change. Well, that is true. We had all companies on duty that day responded that morning and we back filled our stations with mutual aid and with off duty Oklahoma City responding to our Maintenance Center and putting in service and they were placed out at station. Excuse me. How many firefighters are on shift . We had approximately 280, 290 folks on shift. That pretty much stayed that way until the middle of the afternoon before we started releasing Companies Back to their stations. The overtime, the off duty people coming in were release the sometimes toward the middle of the night. And then during the next 14 days it was a blend. Some days the activities were such that we didnt need the off duty and simply do it with rotating on Duty Companies and Mutual Aid Companies and there were other days when there was a lot of activity and we would have to call back the off duty. And what about Police Officers. Was there still Law Enforcement protection throughout the city. Your Police Officers didnt respond. There were still people covering their particular beats. Absolutely. Weve had quite a few respond. Over 700 of the thousand officers worked down at the site. We have 120 officers that provided the perimeter control and protection. The rest of the officers stayed and worked their normal areas and normal spots. And probably one thing i would change is i would find some way to rotate them into the procedure because for that 17 days it was hard on them not to come down to the site and not be involved in any way. Because not only for our community but with our departments. Everybody wanted to have a hand and be a part of it. And it was extremely hard for them to stay out and do the routine stuff. Certainly. What about ems. You work eight hour shifts or 24 or did you change the hours of people working because of the disaster . We have variable shifts but the experience was the same, the first 12 hours was the most critical and relied on and off duty paramedics and the need for those decreased after 9 00 that evening. It was interesting, though, that we had a significant reduction in all other emergency calls. So our existing staff was adequate to take care of the rest of the city. Paul, normally we dont think about public works being a 24hour job unless youre the water or light department. But what type of changing shifts would your people were there working the heavy equipment, providing bulldozers, frontend loaders, et cetera, what type of changes did you make in your staffing and how long did that last . On some of the staffing in providing fencing and barricades, we placed those people on 12hour shifts. Were used to doing that because of snow and ice patrols and that type of stuff. So theyre very used to that. So it wasnt a problem. One of the things that we had to do was we had to set up a small city because we have as many as 60 portopotties moved in and garbage to haul out and activities plus people still coming to city hall and want Building Permits and inspections and other things because we had a city to run as well. So we just split our crews up to do both. Life went on. Lets talk before we break here about the urban search and rescue teams. Fema has a relatively new Initiative Since 1991, the urban search and republican teams were brought in and supported, helped out the community, tell me about how you interfaced with them and what your reactions were to that . They came in, we were notified the afternoon of the first day that there were two team en route. And once they were inside they would determine how much teams were needed. We had 11 teams rotating in and out during those times but they were very beneficial. They bring in 60 people, a team, so they dont necessarily bring you a lot of personnel power but they bring the equipment and the level of training with them and in these type of activities that really cant be matched anywhere. They bring you the civil engineers, the people that have dealt with these disasters and so forth. So thats really what they bring that is a benefit. But they came into Oklahoma City from the very beginning, simply to support us. They told us that over and over again. They were in there to support us and fit into our incident command system and be used however we needed them to be used and so it fit very well and we worked very well during the entire operation. Very good. Peter, last question, before we take a break here, in terms of disaster supplies, one of the questions just dawned on me was most ems organizations have a cache of disaster supplies, four by four, drama dressings and things like that, was any of that used . We had our own but we were inundated with medical supplies provided by area hospitals and health organizations. We just have an over abundance of medical supplies and even imposed logistical problem to remain sterility of these disposables. Very good. Thank you, gentlemen. Now it is your turn to ask questions about the Oklahoma City bombing experience. The toll free number is 8002444084. Now joining me for this Interactive Panel are to my right chief gary marrs, the fire chief with the Oklahoma City Fire Department. Next to him is chief sam gonzalez, the police chief with the Oklahoma City Police Department. Next to him is dr. Pete manningas from Emergency Medical Services for Oklahoma City and paul brum director of Oklahoma City public works. Encourage you to call, once again 18002444084. As you move through this, i know youve all had a number of speaking engagements talking to different folks and things like that. What has been the reaction of people, your peers within Law Enforcement and fire and ems, sam, lets start with you as i know youve done a number of presentations. What questions do you get . What do people want to know . Pretty much what weve talked about tonight. How they could expect to have to respond and the things they need to do, emergency plans that they need to put in place. I think one of the very, very keys that we always talk about is like paul brum said is having you a list of resources you could contact. We were very fortunate in one way that this happened at 9 00 in the morning and not at 2 00 in the morning. Because some of the immediate responses we got from our community simply because it was at 9 00 in the morning may not have occurred. So that was extremely beneficial to us. But to things that they could look forward to having to do, how to take care of the cars, the Identification System of allowing people in, the feeding of the people, the housing of the people. All of these are issues that theyre concerned about should this occur in their jurisdictions. Sure. Paul, what about you. As we mentioned before, they dont see themselves as emergency First Responders. Well the public works people do because they do know that any time they have a flood or a fire or sometimes were asked to knock walls down and those type of things to assist the Fire Department. Some of the things that i would recommend to my public works counterparts is that they put together an Emergency Response team. Good point. A group of volunteers of 12 to 15 people that they could depend on and given instructions to respond to a certain location in case there is an emergency and we use this Response Team, we outfit them in special uniforms so theyre labelled when they get onsite, the police and Fire Department know who they are so they could respond and assist them with whatever they need very good point. I believe we have a caller on line from Oklahoma City. Hello, Oklahoma City. Caller hello. Hello, are you there . Caller yeah, finally. Go ahead, sir. Caller my question is the Department Heads went to emi conference up in emmitsburg and i want to know when they came back home run to Oklahoma City, did they have any practice sessions or anything like that prior to this incident . Chief, why dont we start with you. Chief marrs. We certainly had some discussions, certainly when you come back one of the first things you talk about doing is revamping Emergency Operations plan, looking into procedures that you may have had sitting on a shelf for a long time. You look at what you went through with emi and how you need to revise those. The Emergency Operating Center in Oklahoma City works under the police chief, the Department Head and sam immediately upon returning sent those books out and said lets look at these and revise how we need to and so on and so forth and that was in july and in april of wasnt that much longer after that. Sam, how about you. Well, weve had several emergency drills. I hate to tell you, but im not exactly legislature the timetable. Im not sure between july of partly sunny 84 and april of 95, we had them about twice a year primarily out at the airport. We did revise some of the things we do with our Emergency Response team that assisted them in responding better. We have another call from cedar rapids. Go ahead, maam. Caller i have a room full of American Red Cross Disaster Service volts and we would like to know if we could talk a little bit about the different agencies that were more in the background and how we served this particular situation and then we certainly wish Oklahoma City and everybody the very best because we were all praying for you. Maam, if you could turn down your monitor here. Peter, lets start with you. Im struck by that question. Because as i was thinking about it, one of the things when i go and talk, one of the things that im really struck with is that this incident was not about an individual or a single agency, it was about a community if not a nations response to a disaster and a nations resolve and the demonstration of its faith. And there were so many so many agencies behind the scenes like the Oklahoma Restaurant Association who are really the heroes of this whole thing. We were doing a job. And it is our duty to respond and duty to take care of patients and take care of evidence and rescue people. But these individuals were volunteers. And im just so struck by that. I know ive seen the photographs of people getting back rubs, the firefighters and Police Officers, urban search and rescue teams, people taking laundry home at night, just normal folks that live in Oklahoma City taking laundry home and doing peoples laundry and just amazing. One of the stories i heard i think one of the guys from new york city after the world trade certainty bombing a cup of coffee cost you 3 and you were getting pizza and all kind of food in Oklahoma City. So there is that spirit of the heartland was here. I think so too. And the red cross and the Salvation Army were in the forefront. I probably didnt do a good enough job but when i talk about the oklahoma standard set, that was the red cross and the Salvation Armys and those so you certainly dont see them in the background. But one point that you touched upon earlier that i wanted to mention is how you dealt with the families and people calling in and asking about family and doing that. The red cross energized a shelter very early that morning, a church about two miles north of the site. And very quickly took established responsibility for handling the family members and the victims. To where on site down there that morning not only people that came up onsite that people that might have called in asking about family members were directed to that Red Cross Center and they handled that and it become the family center. It became a very emotional side and stayed in place until all of the operations were ceased and that couldnt have happened without all of the the preplanning and training and foresight of the red cross to do shelter operations and their disaster planning. So a great big hats off to them. Certainly all of those relief organizations, Salvation Army and red cross deserve applause also. We have another caller on the line from piedmont, oklahoma. Go ahead. Caller what i would like to know is when Oklahoma City went in a general alarm, what or basically my main question is your Mutual Aid Companies that came from all over the state. You had to have people, firefighters all around and [ inaudible ] responded to the scene and you had to call other agencies to cover the city of Oklahoma City. I want to know what you felt as far as mutual aid from places that didnt get the call but came and offered assistance as far as emts on staff and such like that. The people that came in not necessarily in our Mutual Aid Network but the ones you refer to that came in from around the remaining of the state and around the country. We had firefighters flying in from other states over the next few days. Tremendous response coming in and certainly youre grateful for it and encouraged by it and they want to come in and help. And it did spend a problem with people coming in like that because it dawns on you that you have a burden for those folks an the liability. So we set up a mutual aid command post that all people that were not oerk city or usar had to go check through the mutual aid command post and they people were the responsibility for checking out the firefighters that were coming in to make sure that the department knew they were there and cover them in their operations, if they had the training and so on and so forth. They came in from all over and were certainly a big benefit that first morning when we just needed basically all the hands we could get. And sam, we talked to peter and he had a lot of doctors and nurses. Did you get Law Enforcement officers come from around to help also. Was that a problem. It was a problem initially because we had everybody that will agree during the first hour, we had more people in that building than what we safely needed in the building. A lot of the people didnt have the expertise needed to be in the building and certainly we had a lot of Police Officers from around the community that responded that wanted to help. A lot of our offDuty Police Officers. We very quickly set up our command post at the command center and had all of the Police Officers go through them for assignments. A lot of them we sent home and come back at 6 00 tonight. But we them all through the command center. Very good. In terms of Emergency Response and disaster preparedness, you touched on the integrated Emergency Management program that you went through, what outside organizations have you brought into that or are first up in terms of calling like the red cross, Salvation Army, maybe the local phone company for the frequency dependent cell phones. Sam, again. Well the companies that went with us, we took people from the hospital staff, from our Electric Company, from our gas company, all of those played a key role in assisting us and assisting the community in being able to respond and i kind of agree with dr. Manningas said this was a community response, any need had put out by the media were we overflowed with goods of one kind or another. Did you use the media at all in terms of not only to talk about the incident but to inform and say, please stay away, these are the things you need to do if you are interested in donating, did you use that media not only as a News Organization but to inform, peter . You had to be very careful with the media because if you inadvertently made a request such as we made a particular type of you were likely to get 300 pairs of 150 boots. You had to be careful with your questions. I think at one point chief hanson had to inform the public that we had to stop the centralized Food Distribution because everybody was bringing food to the site which became a major Health Hazard to the rescuers. There was one task force that twothirds of the task force had came down with diarrhea and we believe that that was due to all of the food that around the site that may have become contaminated. So, again, yes, we really had to be careful with the request and funnel those requests through the chain of command. Be careful what you wish more. You might get it. And one of the things that public works does, fuel trucks, taking care of those nonemergency needs that the Emergency Responders might have. Anything that you would change after what occurred in Oklahoma City. . I dont think so. As far as that is concerned. Because any time we needed anything, we would be covered up with it. The Fire Department had indicated one night they needed temporary wiring to light up a parking garage and so i went to the Electric Company and said, hey, can you help me on this issue and they said no, weve got electricians but we dont have household type wiring and boxes and those type of things. It was just a matter of a Television Call and that was delivered to me and we put that in the hands of the elect company and they had it hooked up in a matter of hours. So that is the way it was. Any time you needed something, you made a call to the proper people and it was just the fact that you need to know who to call. Because it was there. You dont want to give out the phone book at the time of disaster. You need to have that prepositioned that is for sure. That is all we have time for right now. Thank all of you that have called in with questions. Youre watching a special edition of American History tv. During the week, while members of congress are in their districts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Tonight at 8 00 p. M. Eastern well tour an exhibit at the u. S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for a look at how the u. S. Public and government officials reacted to nazi germany persecution of jews between 19340 and 1945. American history tv now and over the weekend on cspan. Every saturday night American History tv takes you to College Classrooms around the country for lectures in history. Why do you all know who lizzy borden is and raise your hand if you ever heard of this murder, the gene harris murder trial before this class. A deepest cause where well find the true meaning of the revolution was in this transformation that took place in the minds of the american people. So were going to talk about both sides of the story here, right. The tools, the techniques of slave owner power and well also talk about the tools and techniques of power that were practiced by enslaved people. Watch history professors lead discussions with their students on topics ranging from the American Revolution to september 11th. Lectures in history on cspan 3 every saturday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern on American History tv. And lectures in history is available as a podcast, find it where you listen to podcasts. 25 years ago on april 19th, 1995, a massive truck bomb exploded outside of the alfred p. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The blast killed 168 people. Next on history bookshelf, investigative journalist andrew gumbell contends the bombing was preventible and that the fbi mishandled the case. Mr. Gumbells research with his coauthor Roger Charles including government documents, core respondence with Terry Nichols and over 150 interviews with individuals from the Response Team to members of the radical light and Law Enforcement officials. He spoke at full circle book store in Oklahoma City in 2012. Thank you all for coming tonight. Th