Waco Cultists Perish in Blaze : FBI Calls It a Mass Suicide; 86 May Be Dead : Inferno: Fire is reportedly set by followers of David Koresh as federal agents were smashing into the walls with an armored vehicle. Congress members call for investigation.

In a fiery ending as apocalyptic as the prophecies he issued, religious cult leader David Koresh and scores of his followers were immolated within the buff-pink walls of his Texas prairie compound Monday in a blaze that believers reportedly set after federal agents smashed into the walls with an armored vehicle.

Only nine of the 95 people believed to be inside the Branch Davidian compound escaped, some of them suffering from burns. One woman who ran out in flames, then tried to run back into the fire, struggled to fight off the federal agent who grabbed her. A man standing on the roof of the burning building waved off would-be rescuers.

None of the survivors were children; 24 children, 17 of them under 10, were believed to be still inside as the blazing walls collapsed. Another 21 children, along with 14 adults, had been released during the early days of the 51-day standoff.

And Koresh, 33, born Vernon Howell, the one-time rock guitarist who blended an arrogant messianic piety with a love of things both of the world--his black Chevrolet Camaro--and of the flesh--his many “wives”--apparently perished in the smoke and fire, among followers who had either chosen to stay or were unable to leave.

“We believe David Koresh gave the order for a mass suicide,” said FBI spokesman Bob Ricks.

Last week, after unkept cat-and-mouse promises to give himself up, Koresh warned the FBI in a letter that they would be “devoured by fire” if they tried to harm him.

Six hours passed between federal agents’ first assault on the main building, injecting tear gas through the holes they had bashed in the walls, and the moment at 12:05 p.m. when fire began to consume the building. Within a half-hour, the compound at Mt. Carmel where Koresh had held out--and held forth with his scriptural messages--was a smoking ruin.

One survivor, Renos Avraam, 29, a British subject, told agents that he heard another member say, “ ‘The fire has been lit, the fire has been lit,’ ” before the main building, with its vast armory of weapons and ammunition, went up in a series of roiling, shattering fireballs.

Another survivor, Australian Graham Craddock, told the FBI that he smelled “lantern fuel”--probably kerosene--throughout the compound before he escaped.

From their positions beyond the concertina wire-fringed perimeter of the place that Koresh had christened Ranch Apocalypse, Ricks said, federal agents’ reaction was the same as they watch, appalled, as the flames climbed and almost no one inside ran out to safety: “Oh my God, they’re killing themselves.”

The deadly finale among the wooden buildings set on 77 acres of wind-scoured Texas plain came nearly two months after four federal agents and an unknown number of cult members were killed in a searing firefight between agents and members of the heavily armed sect.

That battle began Feb. 28, when agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms tried to serve arrest warrants for weapons violations.

And just as that operation has been criticized for tactical flaws and the mounting cost of the long wait, Monday’s action, approved by Atty. Gen. Janet Reno with the knowledge of President Clinton, also prompted quick reaction as members of both houses of Congress called for an investigation.

Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), head of the House Judiciary subcommittee that supervises the FBI, said they are “going to find out all about the decision-making issues,” as well as issues of religious freedom. “The whole thing has to be examined very carefully.”

Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, refused to judge the FBI’s action but said that he expects full hearings.

Reno took full responsibility, even saying on ABC’s “Nightline” that she was prepared to resign “if that is what the President wants.”

But earlier in the day, Clinton backed his appointee, saying that while he was “deeply saddened by the loss of life. . . . I told the attorney general to do what she thought was right and I stand by that decision.”

Earlier at a Washington press conference, she said: “These are the hardest decisions in the world to make. My heart goes out to the families of the agents killed and wounded as well as those of the children who perished in the compound today.”

She said that Monday’s tear-gas assault was intended to prevent a mass suicide. “Obviously if I had thought that the chances were great for a mass suicide, I would never have approved the plan.”

“In this situation, I don’t think anybody has ever dealt with a David Koresh, who would purposely set people afire in that number,” she told “Nightline.”

“I think the FBI acted professionally,” she said, “and with remarkable restraint.”

(Gunfire burst forth from the compound before the first tear gas was lobbed in, as the agents were broadcasting “come out” messages. Agents did not return fire, and none were killed or wounded in Monday’s operation. A Texas National Guardsman was slightly injured, said Ricks.)

Experts had told federal agents “they did not think that (Koresh) would ever come out,” said Reno. “We were told that he had more than adequate supplies to last an extended period of time.”

The decision to move in Monday was also weighted by reports that babies were being beaten inside, Reno said. Child molestation charges against Koresh are still pending in La Verne, Calif.

And each shove from the armored vehicle, caving in parts of the main building, breaking windows and poking into hallways, was intended to be another nudge, “a step forward” in the war of attrition to get Koresh to surrender, Reno said.

“Today was not meant to be the day” to force the matter.

“We considered every possible potential and every possible option,” said Reno, and FBI spokesman Ricks explained in a Texas news conference that planners tried to calculate everything, from a “nonpyrotechnic” tear gas that would not spark a fire to the possible effects of the gas on children, before making a move.

Koresh and his Branch Davidian flock perished in “truly an inferno of flames” of their own making, said Ricks.

On Monday afternoon, even as the smoke and ash from what was left of the compound was blowing across the hardscrabble farmland of central Texas, Ricks laid out what details he had of the last hours in the compound.

Ricks held two press conferences Monday: In the first, in the early stages of the tear gas assault, he was confident enough of a peaceable ending to the standoff that he spoke jokingly of Koresh’s beloved Chevrolet Camaro “with all 427 cubic inches” of engine, being towed out of the way the day before, to Koresh’s fury.

At the second one, an ashen Ricks described what went awry.

Over the weekend, interest in the story had dwindled and only a smattering of reporters had remained in Waco. But this time, the room was packed as Ricks ticked off what agents knew and saw, and what they could only surmise.

Virtually the last civil communication with cult members came Sunday night, when agents delivered a package--milk for the children, and typewriter ribbon so Koresh could continue his work explaining the Seven Seals of the Apocalypse; he had promised to surrender after he finished the manuscript.

But on Monday morning, when agents called to alert them of the impending action, someone yanked out the telephone and hurled it out the front door. (Later, a banner hung from a window asked to have the telephone back.)

So the warnings had to be issued over loudspeaker: “We are introducing non-lethal tear gas. Exit the compound now and follow instructions.”

As the armored vehicle moved toward the compound wall around 5:30 a.m., under the flagpole flying the Star of David banner that Koresh favored, 75 or 80 shots came from inside the buildings. Another 10 or 12 followed every time the battering ram mashed into the wall.

Fifteen blasts of gas surged into the buildings each time the ram struck. The gas permeated the compound, snaking down the crawl spaces and into the bus that agents knew was buried below.

Even the best gas masks can only work for about eight hours, Ricks explained, and Branch Davidians were probably not all wearing the best gas masks. Agents hoped that the long reach of the battering ram, and the gas that would follow, would penetrate a four-tier cinderblock bunker at the heart of the compound, where Ricks said Koresh and his advisers were holed up.

“We believed that once we pierced that interior protective room . . . that the time was really running out on them with how long they could stay in there. We put massive gas in there.”

But once that bunker had been breached, Ricks said he believes, “the order was given (by Koresh)” to “set (the compound) up in flames.”

The tear gas had not forced out any cult members. Only the flames did, and then only nine of them.

Witnesses, including FBI snipers and surveillance aircraft, saw the tragedy erupt quickly, from a wisp of smoke into three simultaneous fires. Fire spurted from the white-shuttered upper windows. One saw someone on the second floor of the burning compound in a black uniform and gas mask making a throwing motion. The man knelt down, and flames erupted from his hands.

Reno said late Monday that two of the nine survivors had admitted starting the fires.

In a matter of moments, the slim wisp of smoke became a vast black cloud and raw flames. Travelers on I-35, four miles west, stopped to gawk. Winds crept to 30 miles per hour, and pushed the smoke and fire before them.

Within a half-hour, the entire compound was burned to the ground. The fireballs had not touched Koresh’s flag; it still flew over the rubble.

It was not until 12:40 p.m., however, that the first of the fire trucks came screaming down the country road towards the compound. First there were two fire trucks, followed seconds later by two more. By then, though, the flames, only minutes before so intense, were beginning to burn down. Water thereabouts is usually obtained from wells, and water to the compound had been shut off weeks earlier. Fire engines tapped into a pond nearby, too little too late.

“We could not roll up fire trucks to the scene while people still were inside and had the capability of shooting those people. Firemen are not paid to go through that,” Ricks said. Three “major” explosions rocked the compound and the crackle of stored ammunition being “cooked off” resounded throughout the morning.

Ambulances with no patients inside drove unhurriedly back to Waco at mid-afternoon.

As first the tear gas, and later the flames surged through the wooden buildings, agents watched expectantly for people to flee the stinging gas and smoke.

Koresh had lied “one final lie,” Ricks said, when he assured his people--and this came from survivors--that the children had been “secured in the bunkers . . . that the children had been taken care of.”

“We were hoping . . . that the women in that compound would grab their children and flee out,” said Ricks.

“Unfortunately, they bunkered down with the children, the best we can tell and they allowed those children to go up in flames with them.”

Only nine people emerged. One was found late in the afternoon, bunkered in near the water tower. Another three, identified by the FBI as “suspects and patients,” were helicoptered to Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas. One was in critical condition with third-degree burns over 50% of her body.

The three Chinook helicopters that were waiting to evacuate several dozen people each shut down their engines; no one else was coming out.

Throughout the press conference, Ricks defended the action of the FBI and described the horror of the agents as they watched those inside kill themselves. He talked of how agents had traveled throughout the world to interview former cultists in an effort to ascertain of Koresh had suicidal tendencies. He also said Koresh had told both the federal agents and his lawyer that “suicide was not in the cards.”

“We believe this thing had to be brought to a logical conclusion at some point,” said Ricks. “We think that more than likely they were preparing for an armed standoff. We believe we frustrated that effort. We never fired one single round of ammunition. He wanted to have as many people killed in that compound as possible.”

As the flame turned to ash, agents scanned the premises. They looked for the buried bus, thought to be a place where children might be safe from the flames.

“We immediately doused that area and we went down with the fire department to try to rescue the children if they were there,” he said. “We did observe several bodies. We believe those were previously involved in the Feb. 28 shootout.”

Soon, the FBI will begin to sweep through, searching for booby-traps and bodies.

Then the Texas Rangers will take over, with an assist from an FBI disaster team to help with the bodies. Arson investigators, crime-scene specialists have been summoned. There are the deaths to consider, and the assault itself to be looked into.

Dick DeGuerin, the attorney hired by Koresh’s mother, told The Times in Waco late Monday night that he wants to keep federal agents out of the crime scene. He prefers the Texas Rangers, who “don’t have a dog in this hunt, and the ATF does. It’s in the ATF’s interest to jimmy up the crime scene to make it seem like they were justified in going in like the Marines.”

Nor was Koresh suicidal, he said.

FBI Director William S. Sessions said on CNN late Monday that “nobody” expected Koresh to martyr himself.

For weeks, Koresh and the FBI had danced. He promised and reneged. He was allowed to broadcast his scriptural messages, live and taped, on radio. Members set bedsheets to flapping from upper windows, scrawled with messages like “We want the press” and “Rodney King, We Understand.” They sent out home movies to show that the children were well.

In recent weeks, agents had upped the pressure on Koresh and his believers, surrounding the compound with yard-high barbed concertina wire, cutting off its electricity and playing brilliant spotlights across it at night.

Ominous messages, said Ricks, were a part of Koresh’s prophesying, “that he intended to kill as many members of the law enforcement as he could before his members were killed.”

And Koresh had, from “the very beginning, said that the people in there were going to be killed. And they were going to do it in an armed confrontation with law enforcement.”

Koresh talked to the FBI, talked to DeGuerin, talked off and on to agents, even reportedly talked about selling his story to the movies. He sent increasingly stressed and angry letters--one, purportedly from God, was written in the first person and referred to Koresh as “my servant,” it was reported, and another was signed “Yahweh Koresh.” He invoked God’s wrath against the agents; “I am your God and you will bow under me feet,” the Washington Post quoted one letter.

“Look and see you fools, you will not proceed much further . . . . How dare you turn away my invitations of mercy . . . . Do not fear the fear of man--fear me, for I have you in my snare.”

Times staff writers Louis Sahagun and Mark Stein in Waco, Danny Robbins in Dallas, and Patt Morrison in Los Angeles contributed to this story.

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