The rescuer who was likely the first to arrive at the Murrah Building was an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper.
I don’t know his name. I just know that less than 15 seconds after the bomb went off, after glass pieces had fallen from the downtown buildings, he was rushing his patrol car northbound on a downtown street, one-way southbound Robinson Avenue, to get to the source of the explosion and the smoke.
I know this because I heard the wail of his siren start up.
I looked through the dozens of tinted chunks and shards of glass that had covered my now cracked windshield and saw the blur of his black and white patrol car and heard the roar of its engine as it blew through the intersection in front of me.
I can only imagine the horror meeting him seconds later when he got three blocks away to Robinson Avenue and 5th Street.
More came behind him. There were police and fire personnel. Deputies. EMTs. Nurses and doctors from local hospitals. (And at least one lawyer I know — yeah, believe it or not, himself a former firefighter — who rushed to the scene and climbed fire ladders to help a victim from the Murrah Building wreckage.)
Most police and other emergency personnel that I know create an unemotional wall of protection to guard against lasting effects of exposure to catastrophic and tragic events met in the line of duty. But those who responded to the Murrah Building bombing have become a part of the story as much as others who were immediate victims, and so, became victims too.
It makes perfect sense that each anniversary of the bombing the first who are there are those in uniform. Such was the case earlier this week at the 15th anniversary memorial service, as seen in these photographs I took that morning:
