TERROR IN OKLAHOMA CITY : Grim Hunt Goes on in Shattered Building as Storm Adds Woes : Rescue: Wet, windy weather hampers attempts to search for survivors and increases concerns that the structure could collapse.

With its face blown off and its guts exposed, the Alfred P. Murrah building stands in the Oklahoma capital like an open wound from which horrors still leak. The death toll in the Wednesday bombing rose to 78 on Saturday, but everyone knows there are at least 150 more dead inside.

Heavy thunderstorms rolled in Friday night, and by Saturday’s gray dawn the rescue teams gingerly poking through the tons of debris were being lashed by hail and 30-m.p.h. winds that dropped the wind chill well below freezing. At times, lightning strikes forced searchers to pull out of the building altogether.

The windy, wet weather increased the concern of some structural engineers that the nine-story building could collapse, some 72 hours after a powerful bomb ripped off its north side.

Standing by were chaplains in hard hats and psychologists who met with rescue workers limited to two-hour shifts. “We’ll be looking for those pockets where we could see a tiny hand reach out,” Assistant Fire Chief Jon Hansen said.

But hopes for survivors were slim. Three days after what Gov. Frank Keating called the worst mass murder in U.S. history, all of Oklahoma City seemed to be fighting back tears. In the sodden gloom outside the cordoned-off zone of destruction downtown, people went about their routine business--grocery shopping, hanging around home, visiting friends.

But the composure is fragile. “Oh, my goodness,” Methodist minister Norman Neaves said. “I know some people have difficulty working, they feel weak-kneed, a strange anomie. There’s a tremendous sense of displacement.”

The blast rocked everyone, Neaves said. He’s had calls from former parishioners in Britain, South Africa, from all over the United States.

But the hole is in the center of Oklahoma, in America’s heart.

By late Saturday, rescuers expected to reach the first two floors of the federal building--where the children’s day-care center and the Social Security offices were located. The majority of the missing, including about 15 children, are expected to be found there.

But bad weather was hampering the search for survivors. “We have a lot of exposed steel in that building,” Oklahoma City Fire Chief Gary B. Marrs said. He said that exposed steel reinforcement rods had become “like lightning rods.”

A rescue team from Los Angeles County was among the cold, drenched and exhausted workers back in the building Saturday. One worker emerged from the rubble with a toy fire truck.

Pat Grant, a dog handler from the Sacramento search and rescue team, said emergency personnel were washing down with disinfectant because of concern about contamination from decomposing bodies.

Dogs were playing a key role in helping identify victims. Family members were being asked to bring items from home, which would provide a scent for dogs to help identify victims. The coroner’s staff also was visiting the homes to take fingerprints of missing children off toys.

Officials had to halt the search several times during the day Saturday because of concern about the stability of the building. Time-lapse cameras were being used to determine if cracks in the building were widening.

The grimness of the search for victims was inescapable. “We’ve got the worst possible scenario you could ever think of,” said Ray Blakeney, director of the state medical examiner’s office. “Three and a half days into the incident, and we still don’t know how many are in there. It’s a mess.”

For those awaiting word on the fate of missing relatives, the pace is agonizing. Only 35 bodies have been identified. Joe Mitchell was in the Social Security office being interviewed about his retirement benefits when the bomb went off. His wife, Lee, 54, was in the waiting room. He never saw her again.

“I don’t know where she went,” he said Saturday, looking dazed, repeating himself. “I couldn’t get to her.”

Scores of dead still trapped under concrete and steel under two floors of the building have begun to decompose, threatening to make identification days from now even more difficult, Blakeney said. Searchers were told to wear two pairs of rubber gloves because of possible contamination by germs.

The stress radiating from the wanton senselessness of the bombing seems to have affected everyone, even those with nothing in common with the victims except their humanity. At a Saturday morning media briefing at the First Christian Church north of downtown, even journalists were offered counseling.

“We’ve had a lot of media who really looked distressed,” said Eric Kramer, a Red Cross official in announcing that counselors were standing by to talk to any of the hundreds of reporters in town covering the story. “I’ve had some who started crying while I’ve been talking to them.”

Debriefing has become the buzzword for mental health counseling.

Indeed, Dan Nelson, a child psychiatrist directing the family assistance program for the American Red Cross, said he was taking Saturday afternoon and today off for debriefing. “I was in here this morning at 3 a.m., just walking through the (church’s) nursery, and I just wanted to cry,” he said. “I knew then that I needed to take a day out, that I needed to stop.”

He added that none of the people waiting at the church for word of relatives would even enter the nursery. “They won’t go in there, because it’s too painful,” he said.

Among the mourners are scores of volunteers, from counselors to teen-agers passing out soft drinks to reporters. “There’s a lot of crying,” Blakeney said. “I see people walking down the hall crying, and we don’t even ask. We just give them a hug and go on.”

Red Cross official Bucky Kilbourne said that many of those waiting in the church planned to attend today’s prayer service at the Oklahoma State Fairgrounds. President and Mrs. Clinton are scheduled to be there, along with the Rev. Billy Graham.

Art Carrillo came from Kansas City, Mo., with pictures and dental records of his missing brother Michael, 44, who worked for the U.S. Department of Transportation on the fourth floor of the federal building.

“When our own people do this, that’s the hard part,” Carrillo said. “In America, we don’t hate; we’re not supposed to hate. I’m still trying to get over that our own people did this.”