Oklahoma City: The Blood of Innocents

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WHEN EDYE SMITH DROPPED OFF HER SONS Chase, 3, and Colton, 2, at the day-care center in the federal building, she still had the powdered sugar on her cheeks from where they had kissed her, their mouths full of doughnuts. Both boys were in a playful mood. Smith bent down to give Colton another kiss and he pretended to cry. As she turned her back to walk away, Colton called out joyfully to his mother and ran to give her a big hug. "I love you, Mommy." Chase also rushed forward to embrace his mother, and declared his love. That was the last time she spoke to her sons.

The young mother jumped into her car, and headed to her secretarial job at the IRS five blocks away. Her colleagues had bought a cake and soda in celebration of Smith's 23rd birthday on Friday. As she stood up to slice the cake, she heard the blast and the building shook. From the windows they could see the smoke rising: "We thought it was the bank," recalls Smith. "I turned to a co-worker and said that's so sad. That's some little child's mother that's been killed."

Office workers started flooding into the streets below, and Smith and her co-workers followed. As Smith and her mother Kathy Graham-Wilburn, who also works for the irs, got closer to the area of the blast, they felt their stomachs constrict. They made their way through the crowds, past the bodies, listening to the children crying in the streets and studying every bloody face carefully. She found neither Chase nor Colton.

What had been the day-care center lay at the bottom of a crumbling layer cake stuffed with metal and concrete. Smith fell apart, crying and screaming the names of her sons, Graham-Wilburn recalls. The two women waited three hours in the vicinity of the blast, waiting, hoping, praying for good news of the children. Smith's brother, Daniel Coss, 25, an officer with the Oklahoma City police department, found his nephews. He identified Colton at the temporary morgue that had been set up near the former day-care center. Three hours later, Coss located Chase's body at the medical examiner's office.

WITH EACH PASSING HOUR THE RESCUE forces swelled. The national-disaster plans designed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency fell into place so smoothly that the whole scene looked like a hideously realistic drill. Air Force and National Guard units and fbi counterterrorist teams and forensic specialists began to arrive in early afternoon. They joined 60 fire fighters from Phoenix, Arizona, summoned for their skill in extracting bodies from rubble. A planeload of 100 of the city's leading doctors heading for a medical retreat in Houston heard the news when they landed, got back on the next plane and came home to work.

Like an awful parade, the cranes and backhoes and heavy equipment marched in, as did the specialists with listening devices and remote-sensing equipment, and dogs to help sniff out victims. The animals discovered at least 50 people, none of them alive. One trainer brought a dog specially trained to find babies, who smell different from adults. But the only child they found was already dead.

Time.com

Oklahoma City: The Blood of Innocents

IN THE BOMB'S AFTERMATH, TALES OF HORROR AND HEROISM