TERROR IN OKLAHOMA CITY : Rescuers Brace for Horrors in Crater : Blast: ‘There’s . . . a lot of apprehension. We know there’s the possibility of finding a lot of dead children in there,’ a fire official says.

Using their hands, shovels and a giant crane that reached high into the lowering Midwestern sky, search teams edged closer to the ultimate bomb-blast horror Sunday--a cavity in the ground where up to 125 bodies remain buried under the rubble.

“There’s apprehension, a lot of apprehension,” said Jon Hansen, the city’s assistant fire chief, minutes after he emerged from the ruins of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. “We know there’s the possibility of finding a lot of dead children in there. There is not likely to be any survivors. It’ll take a miracle at this point.”

Four days after a terrorist bomb blew away a third of the busy, nine-story office building, miracles were on the minds of many Americans. As President and Mrs. Clinton joined about 10,000 others for a prayer service at the state fairgrounds here, the hunt for bodies was suspended for a moment of silence. And then, amid the noise of jackhammers and the dust from concrete saws, the grisly task resumed.

The official death toll from the worst terrorist act in U.S. history stood at 74. But shaken professionals from the country’s elite search and rescue teams now have removed enough debris from the blast site that the grim evidence of the bombers’ work was clear. They could see the dead, but they couldn’t get them out.

Many of those who remain under slabs of concrete and pinned behind twisted steel are children who had been in the federal building’s second-floor day-care center. So far, the bodies of 13 children have been recovered and identified. About 15 others are reported missing.

But many more people were believed killed in the first-floor offices of the Social Security Administration, the General Services Administration and the mail room. Others died in nearby buildings. Hansen said he saw four more dead Sunday in a smaller office building that also housed a restaurant across the street from the federal building.

“This will be a tough day,” Hansen said.

Standing by were four refrigerated mortuary trucks, each capable of holding 40 bodies. “We’re ready,” said Ray Blakeney, director of the state medical examiner’s office.

To beef up his own staff, Blakeney said, 10 Army mortuary specialists had been called in from Ft. Lee, Va.

Despite getting close to the remaining bodies, however, Blakeney said it could take two weeks before all are pulled from the ruins. “It’s indescribable. It’s terribly disappointing. It’s like trying to build a nine-story building in a week.”

Stormy weather, which included lightning, and worries about the precarious stability of the downtown building have slowed search efforts. Structural engineers directed shoring-up operations to enable rescuers with dogs to enter unexplored areas of the shattered building.

“There is floor-to-ceiling rubble,” said Gail LaRoque, a dog handler with the Sacramento search-and-rescue team. “We are literally crawling through on our hands and knees.”

Searchers spray-painted DB (for dead body) or V (for victim) with an arrow pointing to where bodies were found.

“It’s very slow, meticulous work,” said John Lenihan, a fire captain who is here with Los Angeles County’s search-and-rescue team.

“In an earthquake, you generally have large sections of the building which collapse away from the support members,” he said. “In this, the shock wave from the bomb pulverized the concrete floors and walls. . . . So you have smaller chunks of concrete. There are fewer void spaces for survivors.”

Although temperatures in the 40s slowed the rate of decomposition, masked and double-gloved rescuers took precautions. After each body is removed from the building and carried to a staging area in a nearby church, Blakeney said, rescuers must undergo decontamination.

“At this point it’s the tedious nature of the process, along with apprehension over what they’ll find” that preys on the minds of those in the building, Blakeney said. “It’s also frustrating when we can see portions of victims and can’t remove them.”

Rescuers emerging from the building after a two-hour shift said they were using wheelbarrows and hand scoops to uncover sections of the bomb crater into which debris had fallen. At times, they are waist-deep in rubble, or stooped under cracked slabs of concrete hanging overhead.

“I’ve gone through three pairs of kneepads,” said Sacramento rescue worker Troy Malaspino.

“It’s like being in an average office building after someone ran it through a blender,” said Robert Macaulay, a member of the Urban Search & Rescue team from Sacramento.

Federal law enforcement agents stood alongside the searchers, ready to preserve any evidence that might be needed in a criminal prosecution.

Lenihan said the blast caused the floors to pancake, collapsing the second story down to street level. “So that preschool would have been right in the main thrust of it,” he said.

LaRoque, the Sacramento rescue worker, said: “Things from the fifth floor are on the first floor.”

She added that the dust and debris have made it difficult for her and her dog, Torrey. “Every one of us would come out after half an hour or so and rinse off the fiberglass,” she said. “We’d get it in our eyes, our throats. The dogs were coughing.”

She said it was also difficult for her dog to maneuver. “For every 45 minutes I work, I’m probably lifting her 20 to 30 times just to help her get over the rubble,” LaRoque said.

Hansen, the Oklahoma City assistant fire chief, said he expects the search to continue at least a few more days. “The clock’s working against us. We realize it will be a miracle at this point if anybody is in there alive.”