Day 17 at Blast Site: Hope Ends and Healing Begins
Barely 14 hours after they called off their mournful search for victims, hundreds of firefighters, police officers and other rescuers today stood shoulder to shoulder beside the shattered ruin of the Federal Building, silent witnesses at a memorial service signaling the end of hope and beginning of healing in this wounded city. Just before midnight Thursday, exhausted teams of searchers who had spent the last 16 days crawling through the rubble of the building pulled the last of the 164 victims from the wreckage left by the nation's deadliest terrorist attack. Two more are missing. But as the living gathered in gauzy sunlight this afternoon to remember the dead, they also honored those who worked with such courage and determination inside the building's jagged skeleton. As the brittle rasp of drumbeats and a bagpipe dirge echoed off the broken granite ruin, and the rescuers turned and walked away for the last time, scores of spectators watching from behind police lines began a chorus of applause that lasted for more than 20 minutes. Some in the crowd, their faces streaked with tears, came forward silently to embrace the men and women who had spent so many hours inside the rubble. "We can't understand why it happened," Gov. Frank Keating said, as he stood on the plywood boards that cover the yawning crater left by the bomb and addressed the ranks of searchers. "The magnitude of our loss and the sadness we feel can't be described with words. We know we are people of faith and that those who died behind us are with You in paradise." The bomb that had sent hundreds running in terror on April 19 ultimately brought thousands more rushing to help, hold and heal. Bands of bright orange netting secure the torn front of the nine-story building, hemming in the jumble of file cabinets, doors and heating ducts exposed by the blast. A large slab of dangling concrete has been lashed securely near the ninth floor, and a large pile of debris presses up against support beams near the building's center. Having picked the rest of the building clean, searchers cannot burrow further into that mound of rubble for fear it would make the building's support columns buckle. The two missing victims were identified today as Christi Rosas, 22, and Virginia Thompson, 56. They worked in the Federal Employees Credit Union on the third floor. That brought the death toll from the bombing to 166, including 19 children. One emergency worker, a nurse, was killed during the rescue. Although search officials had limited their work to daylight hours because they could not properly monitor sensitive equipment used to detect shifting walls and columns, they allowed work Thursday night to continue until 10 minutes to midnight, when the last worker left the scene for good. "It has been emotional from Day One and it's getting more so with closure at hand," Jon A. Hansen, Assistant Chief of the Oklahoma City Fire Department, said on Thursday. Facing the grim knowledge that the last living person had been pulled from the rubble late on the night of the explosion, both the searchers and the families of the missing spent the last two weeks struggling against their own desperate hopes. "We realized time was working against us," Mr. Hansen said. "As time passed we became more realistic." A horrible awe filled some of the people who drifted to the memorial service. Their shoulders shook and their eyes filled with tears as they gazed upward at the ugly, gray remains. But even some of the rescue workers acknowledged that they needed to see it one more time. "It doesn't really seem believable," said Michael Remkus, a firefighter with the Fire Department in Edmond, Okla. "I wanted to see it in a sanitary fashion. And walk away." He had worked several shifts, he said, and removed two bodies. "There was an eternal flame of hope of wanting to find survivors," Mr. Remkus said. "But there was the pragmatic outloook that there was only going to be victims." He looked at the building. "I'm just glad it's done," he said. For many of the rescue workers, the service today was the beginning of a process of healing, a way to remind themselves how people from different departments, agencies and states pitched in without thinking. Maj. Dwayne Doolittle of the Oklahoma City Fire Department has not had much time to think since spending more than 100 hours at the site. He said he slept with his radio on beside his bed, and had to be nudged by his wife to turn off the news at 4 in the morning. "We're not heroes," he said. "We're just different people. We go into buildings other people are trying to get out of." "The heroes are the people who didn't make it out." In front of the shattered shell of the building, Federal agents in nylon jackets stood alongside local police officers in blue uniforms, Red Cross volunteers in hard hats and doctors in green scrubs at the service, which began at 2 P.M. After a few short prayers and scripture readings, a wreath was laid near the western edge of the building, not far below the dozens of state flags that dangled from the upper floors, where they had been left behind by rescue workers. Buckets of red roses stood on the neatly swept street, where hours before the F.B.I. had filled yet more yellow containers with possible evidence from the scene, to be taken away and sifted for clues. As workers doffed their hats and dabbed at their eyes, two buglers played taps. The sound of shuffling feet was barely audible as the bagpipers, rescuers and others began to leave. Then, by the chain-link fences at the end of the block where people have gathered over the last two weeks to leave flowers, teddy bears and flags, the applause slowly began and continued as each rescuer passed. "When you are just one in a million what can you do but clap and tell them I love them and appreciate their efforts," said Tonya Turner, a cashier who was in the crowd. "I just need to be here." The applause reminded Major Doolittle why he had kept going over the last two weeks. Such support, he said, kept his colleagues up and fighting the clock, even when they were too tired to stand or walk. "The things I thought were important prior to the 19th of April don't seem so important anymore," he said. "People. Touching people in a positive manner does. The thank you's that didn't come so easily before. They just come out, now." Around him, firefighters became fathers again, hoisting their children on their shoulders. Spouses walked arm in arm into the crowd. As the onlookers parted to let the rescuers leave the site one last time, they pressed closer to the fence. A Red Cross volunteer walked up to them, a bunch of roses in his arms. One by one, he slipped the roses through the fence and into eager hands. He tossed the last few over the barbed wire and into the crowd. There was nothing to fear, because the thorns had been removed. This city had bled enough.