the floors collapsed, sandwiching
together and funneling thousands of
tons of debris down toward a giant
crater blasted out by the bomb.
A few minutes after the blast, a
breeze lifted the smoke and dust,
and sunlight flooded the groaning
carcass that the Murrah Building had
become. Its cheerful face was gone—
completely ripped away. The cav-
ity carved out by the bomb reached
almost to the rear of the structure.
Daylight shone clearly from the other
side. Twisted cables spilled from the
top. Grotesquely contorted rebar jut-
ted wildly in all directions. Fire and
burglar alarms shrieked from nearby
buildings, which took some of the
brunt of the explosion.
Within minutes, a rallying cry
spread through the confusion: theshearing off the connecting steel
reinforcing bars (called rebar) and
demolishing three of the building’s
major support columns.
Desks, file cabinets, and chairs
became deadly shrapnel. Chunks of
concrete—ranging from fist-sized to
wall-sized—were tossed about. Mil-
lions of shards of glass, as well as plas-
tic from the bomb, became sharpened
daggers that sliced through the air at
the speed of bullets.
In violent undulations, whole
floors were ripped loose from their
moorings. Then, yielding to gravity,rd.com 93More than 500 people worked in the
Murrah Building (facing page and
above). The rescue and recovery effort
lasted for 16 days.bi
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