Audio Transcript

You show up on the scene like that and clearly it’s huge. I was in Waco during the first Trade Center bombing. And as a bomb technician you kind of keep track of those sorts of things so this was clearly, from inception, a unique and major event. How it tied into McVeigh’s perception of Waco and linking those things together was unusual, which of course we learned later on. But the scope of it from the time I drove up was obvious.

I was there around 9:30 or 9:35. It was very early on. As I said, the fires were still burning. I remember a part of the site assessment was just to give a sense of what had gone on and you could still see people trapped on the upper floors of the building and of course the firefighters were putting the fires out and paramedics and ambulances. There were a lot of wounded people, walking wounded.

It’s emotional but there is a lot to do. And it’s not that you’re not empathetic or sympathetic but you have to sort of push through that to get to the job at hand. You know just like I can’t help somebody as a paramedic could or the firefighter apparatus so everybody has a specialty and you just have to rely on those other first responders that they are going to take care of their part and they will presume that I’m going to do my part.