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| DEADLY EXPLOSION | |
 April 19, 1995  |
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Charles Newcomb of Oklahoma
Educational Television reports from the scene of the Alfred P. Murrah
Building explosion. |
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 ROBERT
MacNEIL: We lead with the Oklahoma City bomb story. The federal office
building attacked held 550 employees today, as well as a day care center.
Officials on the scene have said the explosion appeared to be caused by
a car bomb, although the investigation is just beginning. Hundreds are
still unaccounted for, and federal bomb experts and investigators have
been arriving in the city throughout the day. We begin with a report from
Charles Newcomb of Oklahoma Educational Television.
CHARLES NEWCOMB: The scene was more appropriate to a third world war zone than a city in the middle of the United States. Hundreds of people were injured, both in the federal office building and other structures surrounding it.
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| Like a war zone | ||||||||||||||||||||
| CHARLES NEWCOMB: Oklahoma City
Minister Larry Jones, who has been involved in numerous overseas relief
efforts, never expected to see this kind of damage at home.
LARRY JONES, Feed the Children Ministries: My first reaction coming on this was it looks like Bosnia, where, as you well know, there's been a war going on for four years. The other place it looks like is the Armenian earthquake, the Mexico City earthquake, it looks just like an earthquake. It's almost unbelievable to see the magnitude of this bomb. I just can't -- I just can't conceive of anybody doing what they've done today. But this is mid-America, and I think this probably sends an alert not only to the United States but throughout the world of the kind of things that can happen in the future and in the days ahead.
MAN ON CELLULAR PHONE: They say there is possibly another bomb. JON HANSEN, Oklahoma City Fire Department: We had to shut down operations for about twenty to thirty minutes because of that, and that was very frustrating because we were right at the point where we had people, and we had to leave 'em. We got back to 'em, and like I said, it's just going to be maybe a two- or three-day event. MAYOR RONALD J. NORICK: That building had somewhere around 900 people in it, and so we've got to get in there, and that's the main thing first, is to try to find people that are in that particular building. CHARLES NEWCOMB: For officials on the scene at this point, it's only a secondary concern to find out who did this and exactly how and why. |
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MIKE
CONNELLY: [person injured in explosion] There was a bomb, and the ceiling
fell in, and the building shook, and the walls crashed in, and I covered
my head up. And then it was a matter of yelling for people to see if
they were okay. There just wasn't that much you could do. We got Fran
out of her office as best we could and someone else who was kind of
locked in, but after that, we just -- we found a chair and brought her
downstairs. 
CHARLES
NEWCOMB: Just an hour after the initial explosion, downtown Oklahoma
City was shaken up again with word of another bomb or maybe two.