Among those heading toward the
building that day was a man driving
a large yellow truck, its sides em-
blazoned with the black-lettered logo
Ryder.
Inside the 20-foot truck were
4,800 pounds of a ghoulish, volatile
mixture of diesel fuel oil and gray
ammonium nitrate fertilizer, which
filled as many as two dozen 55-gallon
blue plastic barrels. The entire truck
was a lethal bomb.
Shortly before 9 a.m., the manAt around six on the morning of April 19,
1995, the area around the nine-story
AlfredP. Murrah Federal Building in the
heart of Oklahoma City began to come alive
as hundreds of people—workers, visitors,
folks with government business—converged
on the downtown area.pulled the yellow truck up to a park-
ing spot on the street in front of the
Murrah Building. The truck was just
east of the center of the north-facing
building. Thirty feet away, above
the entrance, the children of the
America’s Kids childcare center were
playing. Some of them had parents
who worked in the 18-year-old
glass-and-granite-clad building,
which housed 16 federal agencies.
Just a few minutes before 9 a.m., the
man lit the fuse and walked away. In
the day care center, the smallest chil-
dren had been placed in their cribs to
settle down for naps. The older chil-
dren sang their favorite songs, then
had free time to play.
The fireball that hit the Murrah
Building seven thousandths of
a second after detonation put
1,000 pounds of pressure on every
square inch of the structure’s surface.
It lifted all nine floors upward,92 april 2020
Reader’s Digest Special Report
opening^spread:^ charlesporteriv/zumapress.com(inset).^this^page:^ jimargo/gettyimages