OKLAHOMA CITY: AFTER THE BOMB : Even Counselors Fall Victim to the Strain : Disaster aid: The prolonged ordeal has taken an unexpected toll on those who comfort the rescuers. Many have burned out and gone home.

They are mental health counselors, experts at comforting victims of sudden, terrible losses. And so the widespread emotional devastation here should hardly be new to them.

Yet eight days after the bombing of the federal building, the tragedy’s magnitude--prolonged by the inability of rescue workers to retrieve all of the victims from the ruins--is beginning to take an unexpected toll among the hundreds of psychological healers here.

Many are burned out and have gone home--leaving others to complete the task, staggered by the burdens of those who have lost loved ones, those still awaiting word on the missing and those who have spent days and nights sifting the rubble for severed body parts and children’s remains.

The demand for counseling has been so strong at times that over-taxed counselors have had to practice “spiritual triage,” according to Father Joseph Ross of the St. Thomas Moore Catholic Church in nearby Norman, Okla., a volunteer here.

And there seems no end to this heartbreaking drama, with officials saying Thursday that it may take another week to locate the more than 90 bodies still believed to be in the debris.

At the blast site Thursday, eight more bodies were recovered from the debris, pushing the death toll to 110. Assistant Fire Chief Jon Hansen said rescuers were excavating what had been the Social Security office and the America’s Kids day-care center, but that no additional children were found.

Investigators reconstructing the explosion also said they now believe that when the 4,000-pound bomb detonated, the back of the nine-story building was blown directly in the air, its three supports collapsed, and the floors then descended into a rubble pile a story and a half high.

Emotional trauma among rescue workers and counselors is not uncommon. But the severity of emotional disturbance among the counselors here, given the peculiar aspects of this tragedy, has alarmed officials.

“When you see those tiny body bags, there’s a true physical reaction,” said Judy Touhey, an Orange County nurse and Red Cross counselor here. “It makes your chest hurt.”

Added Norman Borders, a tired-looking, dust-covered Oklahoma City fire and rescue worker: “When you see a victim with a wedding ring on, that really works on you.”

Emotional burnout among psychological workers typically does not surface until several weeks later. “I’ve never seen it happen so quickly,” said Touhey, who has worked at disasters all over the Western Hemisphere.

Despite the urgency of the task at hand, for instance, several excavators this week abruptly walked off the job and went home to hug their own loved ones, returning a short time later with fresh determination.

Some counselors, so overcome by emotion while driving home at night, have had to pull off the highway until they could recover.

“What we’re seeing is called compassion fatigue,” said Dr. Frank Ochberg, a Michigan psychiatrist and expert on post-traumatic stress syndrome.

Concerned about such signs of stress among the legions of workers and counselors, officials are now taking extraordinary steps to try to counter the spreading anxiety. This week, they began busing schoolchildren to the excavation site to spread encouragement and cheer among the workers.

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“The kids are bringing us cookies and cards and posters that they’ve made. And all that really is helping to keep our spirits up,” said Terry Winston, another Oklahoma City fire and rescue worker.

Counselors who initially “worked the perimeter” to chat with resting workers now are “going down into the pit” to get closer to the excavators.

Even the search dogs, unable to find any survivors for over a week now, have become lethargic and required psychological intervention, officials said. To cheer up the dogs, workers have actually laid down in the rubble so the dogs could “find” them and enjoy a “success.”

This tragedy--and its deeply scarring psychological impact--is so distinct from most others because it is not “an act of God” and there is no immediate finality to it, such as with a plane crash, a hurricane or an earthquake, experts say.

Thus even as many bombing victims are being buried, many families are keeping a desperate vigil for their missing relatives.

“The mending here will happen a lot faster once all the bodies are out,” Touhey said.

She cited another difference between Oklahoma City’s tragedy and most others, including the 1993 Midwest floods. In Bettendorf, Iowa, site of widespread devastation after the mighty Mississippi overflowed its banks, Touhey recalled, a displaced family returned to their house to find the rooftop littered with frog carcasses--and their presumed drowned cat, now fat and content.

But here, there is no comic relief. Touhey said.

Referring to her fellow counselors, she said, “We all cry--mostly at night, after we get back to our rooms.” Increasingly, Touhey added, she has become accustomed to hearing a gentle tap at her motel room door and finding a colleague who needs to decompress.

Touhey said the burned-out counselors who have departed should feel no shame or guilt, adding that their reactions were entirely human and, for the sake of the victims, the only sensible thing to do.

Among the volunteer workers who left this week was Bucky Kilbourne, the chief American Red Cross coordinator at the First Christian Church, site of the huge assistance center for families with missing relatives.

On Wednesday afternoon, he announced tersely: “This is my last day. I’m burned out. I’m emotionally and physically drained.”

But that option, Touhey said, “is not available” to most rescue workers, many of whom have spent hours crawling deep in the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building--often over dead bodies. “And then they are expected to go home and eat dinner,” she added.

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Rescuers are especially vulnerable to post traumatic stress as a result of their experience, and the cluster of symptoms includes survivor guilt, depression, insomnia, detachment from loved ones and increased alcohol use, said John Wilson, a professor of psychology at Cleveland State University and director of the Center for Stress and Trauma.

“What is real important for them is that they have support and debriefing after they are through with their duty,” he said.

All that, and more, is being provided here. In fact, at the command center near the bombing site, resting workers cannot only get food and drink, but also massages from therapists.

Their work is gut-wrenching enough without all the dead children, now believed to number 19, said Ray Blakeney, director of operations at the Oklahoma state medical examiner’s office.

“But when you have children involved, that makes it more difficult for all the workers,” he said.

Times staff writers Marlene Cimons in Washington and Tony Perry in Oklahoma City contributed to this story.