IT’S now 30 long years since the devastating Oklahoma City bombing, but the heartbreakingly tragic memories continue to haunt the first medic on the scene.
Carl Spengler was working as a resident doctor at the University of Oklahoma on April 19, 1995.
DAY OF HELL
He had just finished a grueling night shift and, unusually, went to a nearby diner for breakfast with a friend.
“It was the first time I went for food after work in the four years I had been there,” he told The U.S. Sun.
Little did he know that at precisely 9:02 a.m., he would be sucked into a brutal nightmare that killed 168 innocent people and cast a shadow over his life, and hundreds of thousands of others, forever.
The nearby Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was ripped apart by a truck bomb containing 4,850 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, nitromethane, and diesel fuel, creating a 30 foot-wide, 8 foot-deep crater.
Former soldier Timothy McVeigh, who was 27 at the time, and accomplice Terry Nichols’ deluded plan to take revenge on the government for their perceived wrongdoing at the Waco siege — among other things — exactly two years to the day, was the worst act of terrorism before September 11, 2001.
A daycare center was in the building where, tragically, 19 children also perished.
Estimates claim over 300,000 people knew someone personally who worked in or was in the building, which also housed a law enforcement satellite office used by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).
Everything was ripped apart.
McVeigh received the death penalty and was executed by lethal injection in 2001, with hundreds of victims’ friends and family watching on closed-circuit TV.
Nichols received 161 consecutive life terms without parole.
Oklahoma City Bombing: American Terror, a new Netflix documentary detailing the shocking, senseless act of pure atrocity, was released this week to commemorate the lives lost.
TOUGHEST OF TIMES
It is a difficult and emotional watch for Spengler, now 67, who was in the center of the chaos, performing with almost incomprehensible heroism.
Initially, he thought the ear-piercing bang was a gas explosion and ran to the scene.
He saw cars crushed by the shockwave of the detonated Ryder rental truck.
Glass was everywhere as he made his way to the front of the building, which now had a gaping, crater-like hole.
The scene was instantly nightmarish. “People would walk a few yards, kind of zombie-like, then either lie down or fall. A few made it to the curb,” he remembered.
A firefighter quickly explained the explosion was a bomb because “gas explosions blow the asphalt out, but bombs blow the asphalt in.”
“Then I knew,” Spengler said. “We had to get to work.”
VICTIMS PILING UP
People were being brought out on backboards in droves. Spengler says the recovery operation quickly became massive — ambulances, fire, rescue and police. Two people at a time were lifted into every ambulance.
In the first hour, according to the doctor, an average of 2.3 patients were being rushed away every minute.
The injuries were severe. “I saw everything,” he said. “Crush injuries, lacerations, head injuries. One man had a lacerated windpipe. I intubated him with a kit.”
Working amid such chaotic, tragic scenes took its toll.
While Spengler and his colleagues were doing everything possible, heartbreaking decisions were being made in a split second. “You had seconds to assess and decide what to do. That first couple of hours was very intense.”
In Greg Tillman’s recently released documentary, the doctor emotionally recalls having to stop treating a dying young girl and switch to another person “in the throes of death.”
“It was a young girl,” he said. “Catastrophic head injury…clinically brain dead. I told them we couldn’t do anything. Another woman nearby had been turned into cannon fodder. Both had agonal breathing, meaning they were dying. I told someone to stay with the child, move her to the temporary morgue.”
More people, including another child, were already on their way. He saw the girl’s distraught mother. “She just waved,” he said. “And then walked away.”
Some bystanders took exception to what they saw and began berating Spengler for supposedly leaving people to die. They were hurling expletives at him.
The woman he prioritized, meanwhile, had massive facial trauma.
He was ready to give up and move to the next victim, but a firefighter handed him a breathing tube and urged him to “try one more time.”
“I had to clear debris off her; her face was detached from her skull,” he said. “I inserted a breathing tube, and they ran her to an ambulance.”
Eight months later, the pair were reunited on a TV show. It was hard for Spengler, now a realtor after 20 years of practicing medicine, to contain his emotions.
“It was great for her, hard for me. Her husband hugged me and said I gave his wife her life back. But he didn’t know I was the person who had, just moments before, almost decided to let her die.”
As the nightmare continued, many involved in the rescue effort were unaware a daycare center had been destroyed. Little Bailey Almon was the first child recovered and the first fatality.
“We met eyes,” Spengler remembered.
THE NIGHTMARE CONTINUES
More patients arrived, yet one has never left his mind.
He almost breaks down in tears at the end of the documentary, recalling the moment fresh fear gripped everyone with the sighting of another bomb.
His treatment of a little girl was interrupted by a furious police officer who threatened to shoot Spengler unless he left immediately. It turned out the device was a dummy from the ATF office.
The agony of leaving his young patient to die has been a terrible burden, even after three decades.
“It still bothers me,” he admitted.
Spengler worked mainly on the street but entered the building several times.
Another girl’s leg was trapped under concrete. Unable to get cell service, the desperate search for an orthopedic surgeon began. “I went outside, and two were standing there,” he said with a smile. “It was like God put them there.”
Unimaginable tragedies continued. He saw a nurse killed by falling debris. Despite having worked a night shift, Spengler incredibly kept working until 5pm, a 40-hour span of pure hell.
The next day, he was back, helping a city come to terms with the atrocity.
His heroic efforts were beyond belief, yet the now 60 year-old admitted to The U.S. Sun that participating in Tillman’s film was “tough.”
He hopes its release will offer some closure.
“You have to face it,” he said.
“All the mass-casualty training I had, no one ever trained me on the human factor,” Spengler told Tillman. “The one thing I didn’t know going into that was what it was going to do to me.”
The documentary producer was blown away after telling Spengler’s story.
“Superheroes go into dangerous situations knowing full well that they have superpowers,” he told The U.S. Sun, “they’re probably going to be okay, they’ve got a shield, they’re gonna turn into a monster, whatever it is. But this was a day for real heroes.
“When people walk into an incredibly dangerous situation they could have easily walked away from and then risked their lives to help save people, they had no way of knowing what the effect would be for them for the rest of their lives.”
One-time Crossfit fanatic Spengler went on to work as a medic for a SWAT team during two different spells in Florida between 1997 to 2003, and one year from 2009 to 2010.
He even became a bodybuilder in his 60s.
“Carl has had an amazing life, but he has carried some of this with him,” Tillman added. “He has a conscience.”
BRAVE RESPONSE
The city of Oklahoma responded to the nightmare with generosity. The governor noted that crime was down because “all the looters were queuing around the block waiting to give blood.”
The dust may have settled in the weeks after — President Bill Clinton commended Spengler for his instrumental role in the triage operation in the wake of the tragedy — but the pain remains.
“It changed me,” Spengler concluded. “It made me more empathetic, but it also made me compartmentalize. You have to, otherwise, you burn out fast.
Source : https://www.the-sun.com/news/14060883/oklahoma-bombing-netflix-timothy-mcveigh-terrorism/