On April 19, 1995 in downtown Oklahoma City, 168 people were killed when a truck bomb went off at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Around one third of the building was destroyed from the bomb, and the rest of the building was subsequently demolished. The land was turned into the Oklahoma City National Memorial and was dedicated on April 19, 2000; exactly five years after the bombing occurred. The attack remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
This began in early 1994 when Timothy McVeigh and accomplice Terry Nichols planned on constructing a bomb that would impact a federal building. In December 1994, they visited Oklahoma City and decided on their target, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. The building was a nine-story building that housed 14 federal agencies including the Social Security Administration, and recruiting offices for the Army and Marine Corps.
McVeigh planned the attack for April 19, 1995, to coincide with the second anniversary of the Waco siege, in which he expressed anger at the government for handling it the way they did. He also scheduled it to coincide with the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord during the American Revolution.
McVeigh and Nichols bought or stole the materials for the bomb and stored them in rented sheds. The bomb contained more than 5,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer mixed with about 1,200 pounds of liquid nitromethane and 350 pounds of Tovex, a water-gel explosive. Including the weight of the drums, the bomb was a combined weight of about 7,000 pounds. Nitromethane is prominently used in the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) for its events. Late in 1994, McVeigh went to two NHRA events and was able to secure three barrels of nitromethane as part of the construction for the bomb.
On April 17-18, 1995, McVeigh and Nichols loaded the bomb supplies into a yellow Ryder rental truck that McVeigh had acquired a couple of days earlier. They then mixed the supplies of the bomb together, which cost around $5,000 (around $11,000 in 2025) and transported it to Oklahoma City.
The impact of the bombing on individuals and families is still huge, even though it has been 30 years since the attack.
“It startled me. Obviously, it was shocking. The thing that really bothered me I guess was that there was a daycare in that building and McVeigh knew there was a daycare in that building but the bomb went off anyways,” history teacher Joseph Flaherty said.
Five years after the bombing on April 19, 2000, then President Bill Clinton dedicated the Oklahoma City National Memorial. It includes a reflecting pool in the middle of two large gates, one inscribed with the time 9:01, the other with 9:03, with the pool representing the moment of the blast. There is also a field of symbolic bronze and stone chairs, one for each person lost in the bombing and arranged according to what floor of the building they were on. The chairs represent the empty chairs at the dinner tables of the victims’ families, with the childrens’ seats being smaller than those of the adults lost. On the opposite side is the “survivor tree”, part of the building’s original landscaping that survived the blast and fires that followed it. Every year, services are held at 9:02 am, the time of the blast, and 168 seconds of silence are observed, one second for each person lost in the bombing.
The Oklahoma City Bombing is a tragedy, 30 years later, the impact is the same. Hundreds of innocent lives were lost due to two men’s distaste of the federal government and this attack became and still is the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history.
Current and former Oklahomains hurt the most, this happened on their land that they call home and their impact is more seismic than any other. Along with Columbine and the 9/11 terrorist attacks, these three tragedies led to new security upgrades on the ground and through the air.
“Being that I used to live in Oklahoma the bombings definitely impacted my family; my dad being in the Army got to see first-hand a lot of the new security upgrades that were implemented in city streets; and after 9/11, in airports as well,” junior Alexander Hady said.
As each minute passes by, Oklahoma City is still healing, the victims’ families are still healing, and every year on April 19th at 9:02 am they pause for 168 seconds and wonder, what if?
