1995: OKLAHOMA CITY BOMBING

The Oklahoma City bombing was a terrorist bomb attack on the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.
The most destructive act of terrorism on American soil until the September 11, 2001 attacks, and was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.
Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, American militia movement sympathizers, had detonated an explosive-filled Ryder truck parked in front of the building.
McVeigh was apparently motivated by his hatred of the federal government and angered by what he perceived as its mishandling of the Waco Siege (1993) and the Ruby Ridge incident (1992). He believed he was fighting for freedom and his message would be better received if many people were killed in the bombing. He timed his attack to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly fire that ended the siege at Waco and the 220th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord.

The Oklahoma blast claimed 168 lives, including 19 children under the age of 6, and injured more than 680 people.
The victims ranged in age from three months to seventy-three years, in addition to the fetuses of three pregnant women.
Most of the deaths resulted from the collapse of the building, rather than the bomb blast.
The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings.

Many who had not been killed or seriously injured returned to work within days after the bombing. Survivors reported a deep sadness and daily being reminded of the people who were missing from their daily lives who had died in the bombing.
Survivors reported severe emotional distress, being plagued by unanswerable questions ("I don't know why I'm alive, and somebody 10 feet away from me died"), continued nightmares and difficulty sleeping, constantly feeling exhausted, anger, and bouts of uncontrolled crying and flashbacks.
The parents of a young child in a daycare center nearby who survived reported weeks of crying, endless nightmares, wide mood swings and daymares, re-enacting the trauma (performing CPR on her teddy bear), and terror of sirens and emergency vehicles.