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Oklahoma, Six Years After: A Doctor Remembers

As Oklahoma City observes the sixth anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P Murrah federal building on Thursday, Dr R Murali Krishna recalls the sadness, tension and cohesiveness of the community during the tragedy.

Krishna, who was then chief of staff at St Anthony's Hospital, felt the April 19, 1995, blast as his office windows, just a few blocks from the site, shattered and crumbled.

Minutes later, the first victims were brought in.

"It was like living through a war," Krishna, 51, recalls. "I saw people with half their faces burned, severed limbs, damaged organs. It was obvious they were victims of a bombing."

"But for me, all the events went by in a flash," he adds. "I was functioning on auto pilot. There were distraught, worried people everywhere and the media was constantly interviewing me."

Along with many other courageous doctors and nurses, Krishna, a psychiatrist with training in internal medicine, spent day and night at the hospital, surviving on doughnuts, coffee and junk food which the hospital sent in at intervals.

What made the tragedy different from a war or natural disaster was the attitude of the victims, he says. "It struck me at the time that the victims -- who were all badly injured and equally in pain -- lay on stretchers quietly and calmly," he remembers. "They didn't demand to be seen first or even question why it was taking so long to tend to them. I found that amazing."

Today is definitely a sombre and emotional day for him: "I will be thinking of the many faces that went through the hospital six years ago. I will remember those who fought heroically and survived and the families who supported them emotionally. And I will pray for them."

Looking back, he says, the first day of the bombing was focused on the injured. The day after that, he dealt with the families of survivors or those who had lost their loved ones. "But what stands out most in my mind is the divine quality I saw emerge in people. I wish we could have bottled it," he says.

There were superheroes everywhere, he explains.

"Everyone in the entire city neglected their own needs to help those in the federal building," he notes. "They paid a heavy price later with delayed trauma and depression, but still there were many, many beautiful stories."

Take the blind man who used to work in the bombed building. Despite law enforcement efforts to stop him, he kept sneaking into the building to search for survivors in the rubble, Krishna recalls.

"Ordinary people came off the streets and offered to help," he says. "People called from all over the world and offered to fly in. Doctors didn't worry about malpractice suits; they treated people everywhere. It was amazing."

The stories are too many to recount, but each is stamped in Krishna's memory.

"I remember there was a nurse who had two children. She left her whole life aside to help in the rescue efforts. She was warned not to go into the building because of the falling rubble, but she still would slip in unnoticed. After a few attempts, she was struck by the rubble and died," he recalls.

He also notes the decency of criminals during this time of crisis. "In one of the adjacent buildings after the blast, all bank employees were evacuated," he recalls. "For a whole day the bank was left open, unsupervised, with all cash drawers unlocked. But there was not even a dollar missing: Crime was non-existent during the tragedy."

In fact, the whole city came together to heal itself, he says. Many businesses, for instance, freely donated their wares to the community.

"A local pizza maker set up a hot oven on the streets and offered rescuers and law enforcement workers free pizzas," he recalls. "There were drinks handed out, blankets too. They gave whatever they could."

In the days after the bombing, Krishna's astute analysis of the suspended disbelief, numbness, shock and general trauma inflicted on Oklahoma City was eagerly sought out by news outlets like NBC, BBC, CNN, CBS and The Los Angeles Times.

The horrified community clung together as they mourned the deaths of the innocent children and struggled to work through the shock, trauma and pain of the tragedy.

Krishna still pales as he describes the turmoil he saw on the faces of the victims and the families. "There was disbelief that this could happen on American soil, fear that it would happen again, confusion as to why they were picked and most of all the numbness that stopped them from facing what was going on," he says.

"But still they reached out to each other and tried to heal," he adds.

Indeed, in the aftermath of the attack the entire country watched in horror as the bodies of men, women and children were dragged from the rubble of the nine-storey federal building. In all, 168 people were killed in the worst terrorist attack on US soil and over 500 were injured.

Authorities caught the two men who parked the explosives-laden rental truck in front of the building housing hundreds of federal offices several days later. In 1997, Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were convicted of the bombing, which was construed as an act of anarchy against the federal government. This year, on May 16, McVeigh, 32, is scheduled to die by lethal injection. Meanwhile, Nichols, 46, is serving a life term in prison with no possibility of parole.

The remains of the Alfred P Murrah federal building were razed a month after the bombing and a national memorial now stands on the site.

"In my life personally, the bombing was a momentous event. I will never forget it. It made me determined to rededicate my life to healing people," says Krishna, who lives in Edmond, a suburb of Oklahoma City, with his wife Syamala, 49, a housewife. They have two children in college, Raja, 29, and Hema Bindu, 22.

The tragedy, he believes, has redefined the community of Oklahoma.

"There used to be a cynical portrayal of Oklahoma, like the one captured in John Steinbeck's famous novel, The Grapes of Wrath. But that's not true, especially now. The community has healed after its long mourning and has emerged as one of the most caring, compassionate and united in the whole country," Krishna says.

"There is one lesson I learned from my experience of the bombing," he adds. "Tragedies and crises can bring out the best in people. It is surprising that something so bad could turn into something so positive for the community, which is stronger and has endured."

A psychiatrist in private practice for 22 years, Krishna is also a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine.

He is the president, COO and medical director of INTEGRIS Mental Health, Inc, one of the state's largest providers of mental health services, and co-founder of the James L Hall Jr Centre for Mind, Body and Spirit, an educational non-profit organisation committed to improving health.

"My philosophy is that we are all instruments in God's hands and we have to find the opportunities for us to serve people," Krishna says, musing on his role in helping people cope with the tragedy. "Mother Teresa used to say, 'God comes to us through suffering people'."

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