Then There Were None

On 19 April 1995 at 9:02 a.m., a terrorist bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Within minutes, the disaster plan was activated at St. Anthony Hospital, the closest medical facility. At 9:08 a.m., the first victims arrived at the emergency room in pickup trucks, cars, and vans. A red Corvette with a blown-out windshield made several trips from the blast site to the emergency room, each time leaving a bleeding victim, then speeding off to pick up another. These initial victims were treated in the emergency room for various superficial injuries caused by flying glass.

By 9:18 a.m., the first ambulances arrived, transporting victims who had sustained major traumatic injuries. To make room for these victims, we moved the patients with superficial lacerations from the emergency room to an adjacent outpatient clinic area. Within the next 10 minutes, ambulances were arriving with such great frequency that three triage teams were required. Overflow of critically injured patients from the emergency room was sent to a nearby intensive care unit. Those less seriously injured were sent to the clinic area.

Ambulances arrived in groups of three or four, some carrying single victims with severe multiple injuries, others containing two to four less severely injured victims. All victims had lacerations from flying glass. The ambulance floors were sticky from the blood. Because the blast occurred at a time when many of the active staff physicians were in or near the hospital, most of the large number of physicians in the emergency room were from St. Anthony or the adjacent Bone and Joint Hospital.

With his entire head and eyes covered with bloody bandages, a young man wearing only a blood-stained Tshirt and Marine Corps uniform pants was helped out of the back door of an ambulance. …