Oklahoma City bombing

In 1995, the U.S. John Murragh Federal Building was bombed by a U.S. citizen, Timothy McVeigh, with a violent anti-government agenda. Before the 9-11 attacks, it produced the heaviest casualty count of any terrorist incident in the U.S., killing 168, injuring hundreds, destroying a substantial office building, and damaging other structures. McVeigh placed the truck bomb alone, although he had one collaborator in building it, Terry Nichols.

Emergency response

The explosion taxed local resources to their limits, at the edge of a mass casualty incident. Some victims almost certainly survived the explosion but died before they could be extricated; certain areas were too unstable for an immediate approach by rescuers. Some trapped victims needed to have limbs amputated, with little or no anesthesia, to be removed from wreckage.

Perpetrators and response

The reasons for the attack were never totally clear, although McVeigh and Nichols appear to have had revenge for the Federal raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas. They were influenced by a militant groups generally characterized as of the extreme right; the incident has some parallels to events in a novel, The Turner Diaries.

Janet Napolitano, now the United States Secretary for Homeland Security and then a United States Attorney, directed the Federal prosecution, which sentenced McVeigh to death; he was later executed.