18th April 2005, 8:07 PM
Quote:At 9:02 am local time on Wednesday, April 19, 1995, in the street in front of the Murrah building, a rented Ryder truck containing about 5,000 lb (2,300 kg) of explosive material exploded. The car bomb was composed of ammonium nitrate, an agricultural fertilizer, and nitromethane, a highly volatile motor-racing fuel. Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf war veteran, was arrested by an Oklahoma Highway Patrolman within an hour of the explosion after coincidentally being pulled over for having no license plate. At his trial, the United States Government asserted that the motivation for the attack was to avenge the deaths of Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas, whom McVeigh believed had been murdered by agents of the federal government. McVeigh called the casualties in the bombing "collateral damage" and compared the action to actions he had taken during the Gulf War. The attack was staged on the second anniversary of the Waco incident. McVeigh is thought to have modeled the bombing on a similar event described in The Turner Diaries, a white supremacist novel that was found with McVeigh when he was arrested.
The effect of the bombing on the city was immense. Beyond the death toll of 168 (including 19 children and one rescue worker), the bomb injured over 800 people and destroyed or seriously damaged more than 300 buildings in the surrounding area, leaving several hundred people homeless and shutting down offices in Downtown Oklahoma City. Over 12,000 people participated in relief and rescue operations in the days following the blast, many of whom developed post traumatic stress disorder as a result. The national and worldwide humanitarian response was immediate and overwhelming, as was the media response. The area was flooded with rescue workers from around the nation and aid agencies coming to assist the survivors, as well as hundreds of news trucks coming to cover the story.
Even though I was only 8 years old when this happened, this is a something that I'll never forget. It's hard to believe it's really been that long.
Sometimes you get the scorpion.