First In: Actions of Engine Company 1

First In: Actions of Engine Company 1

BY MARC L. WOODARD

We were just beginning our shift at Station 1 when the explosion occurred. It felt as though something had hit or landed on top of our fire station. A plane crashing into a building in downtown Oklahoma City, a natural gas explosion, or a tank explosion were scenarios that quickly came to my mind.

The crew instantly slid the poles, quickly glanced outside, and self-dispatched. A mushroom column of smoke and debris was in the air at what appeared to be at 4th, 5th, or 6th and Robinson.

First-responding units included five engines, three trucks, one squad, a brush pumper, the haz-mat unit, and the mobile air unit–a response we “augmented” ourselves by self-dispatching, as the explosion was very close to our respective stations. At the time of the blast, all district chiefs were attending a meeting at Station 1; they responded as well.

Large pieces of metal, debris, and glass were in the streets outside the fire station. Many things were going through my mind as to what had happened, but I was not prepared for the devastation before us as we reached the top of a small hill at NW 5th and Walker, two blocks away from our station.

Major Cornelius Young, acting district chief, and Squad 1, first out of Station 1, turned north on Harvey and parked at 6th Street to allow engine and truck companies access into the incident scene.

As we approached the scene, I heard a radio transmitting that there had been an explosion at the Oklahoma Water Resources Board Building (across the street from the Murrah Building). Immediately after this transmission, the radio traffic became hectic.

I did not give a report initially, as I knew that Young and District Chief Bob McMahon were on the scene, implementing our ICS.

Thinking that this could be some type of natural gas explosion, I cautioned my crew that another explosion might occur. In accordance with our SOP for haz-mat incidents, I directed them to back into the scene between the Murrah Building and the Water Resources Board Building. As the first engine on the scene, our responsibilities were establishing a continuous water supply and fire extinguishment. That would quickly change, however.

We started backing down NW 5th Street at its intersection with Hudson, one block west of the scene. As per SOP, all personnel except the driver exited the apparatus to guide him. As soon as we exited the pumper, we encountered approximately 40 to 70 walking wounded headed toward us.

We continued to move the apparatus into the block. I noticed at that time a red compact car parked in front of the Regency Tower Apartments. The car had been demolished by the explosion. A man ran up to me and said his 12-year-old son was in the car with head and chest trauma. I assigned Corporal Bobby Billeg to take care of this patient. (It was later dscovered that the car, and the boy in it, had taken the impact of the infamous Ryder truck`s rear axle in the explosion.)

We stopped the apparatus between the Murrah and Water Resources Board buildings and were inundated with injured people. I radioed that I needed three ambulances at the corner of NW 5th and Harvey and that I had three critical patients and multiple walking wounded.

Billeg quickly determined that we were going to need a triage area. We told people who could walk or crawl to get to the corner of NW 5th and Hudson, if possible. This would serve either as a triage area or casualty collection point. This was one of the most difficult decisions I have had to make in my 10 years with the fire department–telling people who, under “normal” circumstances, would be considered significantly or seriously injured to try to walk to the triage area on their own. But it was the only thing to do, considering the number of people we had to deal with at this time.

I was trying to perform a proper size-up. Many distractions were coming at me all at once. I was a little in awe of the scene–the number of injured patients, the amount of devastation, the destruction of the buildings. Debris filled the sky. There was a huge wall of smoke. Every building in close proximity of the Murrah Building was damaged.

It was then that I saw the true extent of the explosion`s destruction: The entire front of the Murrah Building was gone. Its street front side was in a block-long pile. When our crew saw this, a certain panic arose in us because we knew a day care center, in which approximately 30 children were enrolled, was located on the second floor (we knew this from our fire preplan developed a year before). Half of the Athenian Building, an 80- 3 100-foot building of ordinary construction occupied by a restaurant on the first floor and offices on the second, sustained major collapse. The Water Resources Board Building, Regency Tower Apartments, and a post office had obviously sustained severe damage–all the windows were blown out of these buildings and they sustained structural damage.

The only fires we saw were in a parking lot across from the Murrah Building; approximately 40 to 50 cars were involved. We knew, however, that live electrical wires and ruptured gas lines in these buildings created the potential for additional fires. Fortunately, there was no other significant fire involvement during the incident.

With so many injured needing help, the citizens of Oklahoma responded heroically: Every able-bodied person began helping those who needed medical treatment to the triage area. Some people loaded the wounded into their cars and trucks and transported them to the nearest hospital.

We began carrying or assisting the patients to a nearby corner where an ambulance was waiting. We never had to wait for an ambulance. Several EMSA units arrived on the scene quickly. Our crew was not treating these patients so much as getting them to an EMSA unit as quickly as possible so they could be transported to a hospital.

Early in the incident, we kept wondering where all our additional help was. At the time, I did not realize so many units had responded on their own and were encountering the same situation we were. Station 1 came into the incident from the west, Station 4 from the south, Station 5 from the north, and Station 6 from the east. Every responding unit encountered many walking wounded, critical patients, and major structural damage. It has been said it was like entering a “war zone.” It is very hard to describe what we encountered on that day, but this description fits.

Our crew ran up to the Murrah Building–literally a pile of debris–and started digging anywhere we thought someone might be or where we heard noises or cries for help. Our crew proceeded to assist two victims–one adult and one child–from the building by digging them out of the rubble. Both were in critical condition.

THE PARKING LOT FIRE

We were quickly assigned to extinguish the car fires in the parking area across from the Murrah Building–a parking area for several buildings on the block. (If this had been another building, we might have had a structure fire to contend with along with a possible building collapse due to this area`s proximity to the bomb.)

I instructed the crew to lay a hose to the hydrant at NW 5th and Harvey. We attacked the car fires with a 134-inch handline, and we had a two-inch backup line in position. One of the burning vehicles was approximately five feet away from the Athenian Building. We quickly knocked down the fire to prevent it from extending into the structure. It, however, continued to flare up because it was almost completely covered with brick and roofing material from the collapse. Several vehicles had large amounts of debris covering them; the debris had to be removed before the fire could be extinguished. This was just one of the obstacles. This extinguishment presented others, including the following:

Several car roofs were flattened by the percussion of the explosion, which made extinguishment more difficult. A person, who apparently had been killed in the explosion, was in one of the cars.

Firefighters performing the extinguishment were anxious to assist in the rescue operations. They did not realize at the time that they were doing just that by extinguishing the car fires and eliminating both the smoke-inhalation hazards for victims still trapped in the upper floors of the Murrah Building and the visibility hazards for rescuers there. Search and rescue operations would be difficult and hazardous enough without this added impediment.

Several gas tanks on the vehicles were leaking. We positioned our attack lines very carefully so they would not be burned or contaminated. This was very difficult because this parking area covered one-half of a city block and manpower was stretched thin at this time in the incident.

As we were extinguishing numerous car fires, we were reassigned to rescue operations in the Water Resources Building. I was instructed to leave one crew member at the parking lot fire and take the others with me. The driver of Engine 1 was both at the pump panel and still providing EMS assistance whenever possible. Engine 6 was assigned to fire extinguishment, and they attacked the remaining car fires from the Robinson Street side. The vehicle fires were quickly extinguished and firefighters reassigned.

WATER RESOURCES BOARD BUILDING

When we arrived at the Water Resources Board Building, the two companies–Truck 1 and Squad 1–assigned to me were already inside performing a primary search. Squad 17 assisted later. I reported to Major Steve Taylor, operations commander in that division. He instructed me to communicate with him by runner because of the heavy radio traffic.

Truck 1 and Squad 1 completed a primary search of the Water Resources Board Building. These firefighters already had removed critically injured and disoriented patients from the building. I assigned Squads 1 and 17 to the basement, which was filling up with water from the destroyed sprinkler system–a drowning hazard for potential victims–and to the first floor for a secondary search. Engine 1 and Truck 1 performed a secondary search of the second and third floors. Corporal Ivory Brent and I conducted a secondary search on the second floor on the south side of the building, the explosion side.

We observed bloodstains in many areas but could not find anyone. Debris was everywhere. Smashed furniture seemed to have been tossed about like toothpicks. Walls were leaning, false ceilings had come down, and conduit was hanging. Live electrical wire snaked everywhere. Brent noticed a slight movement behind a filing cabinet. We moved debris to get a better view and found a female wedged in between a filing cabinet and a desk. She was in very critical condition. The force of the explosion had blown her completely across the room into an area so small that it seemed impossible that a human could even fit in it. She had sustained multiple traumas and appeared to have an airway blockage–possibly, I later was told, from her teeth`s having been blown back into her throat. Corporal Jimmy Schiner retrieved a backboard, and we quickly secured the patient to it. Several crew members removed walls, debris, and furniture to make an exit pathway so she could be brought down the back stairs to a waiting EMSA unit. After this encounter, our secondary search of the third floor proved negative.

The explosion injured 67 occupants of the Water Resources Building. Six were injured critically, and two died.

BOMB SCARES

Just as we completed our secondary searches, we paused to look out the window to see the front side of the Murrah Building when we noticed everyone–rescue personnel and civilians–running from the Murrah Building. We exited the Water Resources Building as quickly as we could and ran north on Harvey Street. This was the first of two bomb scares.

After the scare, with our search in the Water Resources Building completed, we were reassigned to the rescue operation in the Murrah Building.

KEY LESSONS LEARNED AND REINFORCED

In an incident of this type, the supply hoselay should be to a hydrant out of the blast or hazard zone. Our initial lay was to a hydrant too close to the incident; we later had to reposition our apparatus out of the blast zone during the second bomb device scare.

In a mass-casualty incident, mentally triage individuals seeking your first-response assistance–there may be many more far worse off than the first victims you see. It is difficult to ask injured people to move themselves to a triage area; but to effectively handle an incident of this magnitude, your focus must be on the critically injured first.

Based on the number and availability of emergency medical units at a mass-casualty incident, consider focusing firefighters on delivering patients to ambulances rather than providing on-the-spot emergency treatment themselves.

Designate communications runners when radio traffic jams early in a major incident. Command, organization, effective response, and span of control will depend on these runners.

It is easy to become distracted or feel overwhelmed at an incident of this size and type. It is your training that helps you overcome these feelings and get the job done.

Effective firefighting and rescue operations require coordinated, team efforts. The thankless jobs away from the limelight are just as important to operational success as the higher-profile work.

Keep response paths clear for heavy apparatus.

Be prepared for the full complement of hazards at collapse incidents–electrocution, fire, drowning, explosion, falling, crushing debris hazards, etc.

Primary and secondary searches in bombing incidents must be extensive and thorough; victims may be found in areas where it doesn`t seem reasonable for them to be.

SHANE DAVIDSON, corporal, Oklahoma City Fire Department: We found a badly injured child on the first floor, got it out, and continued to search for those whose screams we could hear. On the second floor, I helped remove several severely injured children from a pile of rubble at the west end of the building. As I pulled these small children from the debris, they were so covered in blood and dust, it was impossible to tell if they were girls or boys, black or white. They were children, and we were thankful they were alive.

After getting the children out, I sort of went on automatic pilot. I found a police officer trying to reach a woman buried in the rubble. We could hear her crying for help and we spent thirty minutes digging with our hands to reach her. She kept asking us to find her husband and tell him that she loved him. We told her that she could tell him herself when we got her out. We reached her and had freed her right arm when the order came to evacuate the building because of the possibility of a second bomb. The policeman, an FBI agent, and I decided to stay and try to get the woman out. We decided after about ten minutes, though, that we needed some heavy equipment and more manpower. We explained to her why we were leaving and promised to return quickly. Once outside, however, we were prevented from reentering the building. The order agonized us. We had promised the woman we would return for her, and we felt we had let her down.

From the book In Their Name, edited by Clive Irving, Project Recovery OKC. Copyright © 1995. Reprinted with the permission of Random House, Inc.

MARC L. WOODARD is a 10-year veteran of the Oklahoma City (OK) Fire Department, where he is a major and EMT-D. He is a rescue diver and certified in trench rescue and rope rescue I and II. He responded to the Oklahoma City Bombing as the officer of the first-in Engine 1.