TERROR IN OKLAHOMA CITY : Voices and Reactions

“As we helped people on the street, we could hear children crying, like blowing in the wind. It just feels like a dagger in your heart. You couldn’t see them. You just heard their voices.”

--Red Cross worker Jennifer Harrison

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“The bombing in Oklahoma City was an attack on innocent children and defenseless citizens. . . . The United States will not tolerate, and I will not allow, the people of this country to be intimidated by evil cowards.”

--President Clinton

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“It was like Beirut; everything was burning and flattened.”

--Dr. Carl Spengler

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“Obviously, no amateur did this. Whoever did this was an animal.”

--Gov. Frank Keating

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“I’ve seen firefighters coming out with tears in their eyes.”

--Jon Hansen, assistant fire chief

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“We cannot tell you how long it will be before we can say with certainty what occurred and who is responsible, but we will find the perpetrators and we will bring them to justice.”

--Atty. Gen. Janet Reno

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“You’re helpless, really, when you see people two feet away and you can’t do anything; they’re just smashed.”

--rescuer Christopher Wright

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“It was really terrible with the (YMCA) day-care center. Babies were crying and screaming, with blood and plaster and insulation on their bodies.”

--state Rep. Kevin Cox

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“I thought we were dead. I’ve never heard anything that loud.”

--Ginny Grilley, who was several blocks from blast

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“We have hundreds of potential suspects. However, to say it’s one individual group or people, we’re not near to saying that.”

--Bob Ricks, FBI special agent

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“Whoever did that act, I hope you’re happy.”

--a wounded, sobbing woman who feared her husband and two children were dead

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“How deeply we share the sorrow and the pain with the President of the United States and the people of the United States because of the terrible terror act in Oklahoma City.”

--Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin

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“This could happen to any of us. . . . It would be very sad if we became the kind of country where they start checking under every car.”

--Mary Noll, Interior Department employee in Arlington, Va.

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“Whoever’s responsible for that should die the vicious death that many of those people died in that building. I just want to go home and hold my kid.”

--Gary Jenkins, a weeping emergency medical technician