The Impact of Oklahoma City

An Interview with Harold Schapelhouman, Task Force Leader, CA-TF3

Photograph: (select thumbnail to view detail image)

What do you feel was the greatest significance of the Oklahoma City bombing response to the state-of-the-art of emergency services in our country?

Schapelhouman: The Oklahoma City Bombing was the first real test of the National Urban Search and Rescue Program in relation to the integration of multiple teams involved with actual field operations. The system proved highly effective, but it was obvious that more work was needed on the development of common operations, training, and modification of the equipment cache.

What effect did the response have upon the USAR community?

Schapelhouman: The Oklahoma City Bombing helped to galvanize the National US&R community and validate our current mission objectives, but it also created a new paradigm in regards to what role the system would have, and how it would respond to coupled events that involved chemical or biological agents in addition to conventional devices.

What lessons has Oklahoma City taught us, as emergency responders?

Schapelhouman: The single most important thing that all of us as emergency responders can accomplish is to understand that we must coordinate, cooperate and collectively become more focused and organized when it comes to these types of events, and all types of potential disasters, prior to them occuring.

What lessons do you feel we still need to learn?

Schapelhouman: The Oklahoma City Bombing proved that terrrorism can strike anywhere, anytime, and be accomplished for a variety of reasons by people who may appear to be harmless. So much more needs to be done in the arena of terrorism preparedness. We need to see the Federal preparedness dollars driven down to the street level and given to the real actual first responders to create a more advanced response capability.

In the National Urban Search and Rescue Arena, the system needs to be expanded and modularized to be able to respond to an all risk profile which can offer assistance on a smaller scale to local responders nationwide when they require specialized assistance or on a grand scale for events like the Oklahoma City Bombing.

It's important to put the Oklahoma City event in the proper perspective of understanding that this was a one dimensional problem. We had a conventional device which impacted a given number of structures on the perimeter of the downtown area. No secondary devices were present, and the device was not coupled with a chemical or biological agent. The way in which the structure collapsed allowed us to see from the street into almost every part of the structure, and the building was only nine stories in height allowing for effective use of aerial ladder trucks.

Never the less, 168 people lost their lives, hundreds more were injured, and we collectively as a society were impacted by a realization that if it can happen in the heartland, it can happen anywhere.