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About The daily Nebraskan. ([Lincoln, Neb.) 1901-current | View Entire Issue (April 21, 1995)
Oklahoma Bombing Dai , frustration Federal building security tight I By Matthew Waite Senior Reporter Workers at Lincoln’s Robert Denney Federal Building filed out for the lunch hour at the normal time Thursday. The hallways bustled with em ployees from the offices of the So cial Security Administration, fed eral court and both of Nebraska’s U.S. senators. The children in the day care on the first floor laughed and played as they prepared for lunch. Their smiles were no different. But one thing was. Security measures remained tighter and guards were more alert in the building one day after the bombing of the Alfred Murrah Fed eral Building in Oklahoma City, Deputy U.S. Marshal Chuck LaFollette said. Around the country, security stayed tight in federal buildings. “Of course, there has been heightened security with packages coming into the building—people coming into the building,” LaFollette said. He said security officers also had been looking around the outside of the building. “We really don’t have the re sources to increase the number of (security) people,” he said. Because of the increased aware ness in the building, LaFollette said security also had increased in the day care center in Lincoln’s federal building. “It’ slight there on the first floor,” he said. “For us to go out and check out the building, we have to go by there. It’s right there in everyone’s sight.” Around Lincoln, citizens have been calling the Lancaster County Red Cross to find out how to be come disaster volunteers, local Red Cross spokesman Jim Pratt said. The Red Cross isofferinga class on disaster relief 6 p.m. Tuesday at the First Presbyterian Church, 840 South 17th St. People interested in the class should call the Red Cross office at 441 -7997 to sign up, Pratt said. Those who want to offer finan Bomb searches The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms guidelines to search out explosive devices: • Designate search teams made up of supervisory personnel, area occupants or trained explosive teams. • Move to various parts of the area and stand quietly with eyes closed, listening for a clockwork device. : • Become aware of background noise or transferred sounds such as air conditioners, water pipes, traffic and wind. | • For a search, the area should be divided equally, based on the number and type of objects in the space. Source: Bureajof Alcohol, AP/TradeTso tobacco andRraarms Travis Heying/DN Marvin Potter, a UNL maintenance department employee, lowers the flag outside the Nebraska State Historical Society to half-staff. Potter lowered flags across campus in commemoration of the Oklahoma City bombing victims. rial support for the Red Cross relief effort in Oklahoma City can send checks made out to the American Red Cross Disaster Relief Fund. Pratt said donations can be sent to the Lancaster County Red Cross at P .0. Box 83267, Lincoln, Neb. 68501. PidWiig Continued from Page 1 ity. Major auto parts are marked with an ID number to thwart thieves. Two years ago, the vehicle ID num ber on a piece of an axle enabled investigators to break the World Trade Center bombing case. A federal law enforcement offi cial, demanding anonymity, said in vestigators believed the truck was rented in Kansas, and they were check ing ferti lizer dealers in that state to try to trace the chemicals used in the bomb. Dave Russell, a Ryder Truck Rental official, said the FBI had con tacted his company about a truck rented from Elliott’s Body Shop in Junction City, Kan., about 270 miles north of Oklahoma City. Russell said he could not comment further. The FBI issued sketches of the two suspects after sending an artist to Junction City to talk to witnesses. In Washington, Attorney General Janet Reno announced a $2 million reward for information leading to ar rests and convictions in the case. CNN reported that three men — two in Dallas, one in Oklahoma City — were arrested on immigration charges and were being questioned in the bombing. The men had stopped to ask an Oklahoma Highway Patrol of ficer for directions Wednesday, and the officer was suspicious enough to write down their car’s license plate number. The license turned out to be regis tered to a rental car and not the ve hicle the men were driving, CNN reported. But an official at the Immigration and Naturalization Service in Wash ington denied INS had anyone in cus tody in Dallas or Oklahoma City. A law enforcement source in New York told The Associated Press that one of the men named by CNN, Asad R. Siddiqy, a cab driver from Queens, arrived in Oklahoma City about an hour before the blast and was consid ered a suspect. Until Wednesday, the deadliest bombing in U.S. history was in 1927, when a man fearful he couldn’t pay his property taxes lined a school near Lansing, Mich., with dynamite and blew it up. Forty-five people, 38 ol them children, were killed. Worried friends and relatives ot the missing gathered at St. Luke United Methodist Church, where the Red Cross posted a victims list, Clutching photographs of the miss ing, some stayed to eat, talk to coun selors or sleep. Safety of Heartland questioned after bomb KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)—The bombing of the federal office building in Oklahoma City is sure to make Mid westerners rethink the idea that they are insulated from certain kinds of “violence, experts said Thursday. “I think there’s a real feeling that America’s heartland, even the word heartland, implies that it’s a safe place, a place you can come home to,” said Dr. Donald Rosen, a psychiatrist at the Menninger Clinic in Topeka, Kan. “When a place perceived as less vulnerable to attack is attacked in a more savage way than ever before, it really debunks the myth” that the Mid west is more secure than other parts of the country, he said. Rosen researched attitudes and re actions of people who endured an Au gust 1993 shooting spree at a federal courthouse in Topeka, when a security guard was killed and five people wounded by a man about to be sen tenced on a drug conviction. That attack made people doubt the safety of their workplace, he said, add ing that the Oklahoma City bombing on Wednesday will have the same ef fect. “These catastrophes don’t only af fect the people at the office, they affect everybody,” he said. “Most of us work at an office. Our job sites are not as safe as we thought they were.” In Kansas City, Jan Smith said the Oklahoma City bombing made her feel more vulnerable in a way that New York’s World Trade Center bombing hadn’t. “I feel invaded,” said Smith, a 44 year-old postal worker from the sub urb of Independence. “I feel like the sanctity of the United States was just totally raped yesterday.” Unable to talk, bomb victim finds way to express grief OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — Speckled with scars, a breathing tube in his mouth, a gauze patch over a swollen eye, he had lost two-thirds of his blood from a gashed carotid ar tery. Randy Ledger, a maintenance worker in the bomb-wrecked federal building, couldn’t talk — but he had things he needed to say. Feebly, he lifted a pad of paper Thursday in his intensive-care room. Wrists resting on his chest, he wrote notes. And notes, and notes. He told his parents he had left ev erything to them “if I don’t make it.” Then he tried to cheer them with a j oke when they asked to stay at his apart ment: “Sure! Clean it!” He thanked the nurses “for the gentleness.” He wondered and worried about the General Services Administration co-worker he said had saved him but was unaccounted for now. And he grieved for the day-care children he had left only a moment before the bomb went off. “I heard that this might be terror ists. How,” he wrote slowly, pain fully, “can anyone justify the murder of children for anything?” r—— He also communicated with hand squeezes and tears. “He’s just been crying about the children,” said Sondra Dodgen, oner of the Presbyterian Hospital nurses Ledger thanked. f A day after the explosion and the surgery that saved him, hospital moni tors loomed at Ledger’s side, their changing digital readouts glowing. Intravenous lines fed him antibiotics. Tubes from a breathing machine stretched to his mouth because neck swelling inhibited breathing. Still, when visitors entered his room he managed a half-wave. Ms. Dodgen said Ledger, 38, had received six pints ofblood, about two thirds of the average body’s total, to make up for losses from two cut arter ies in his neck, one of them the thick, throbbing carotid artery. “He would have died in minutes if someone hadn’t found him,” she said. That’s one of Ledger’s deepest concerns. Another note explains: “I could swear that was Mike who found »» me. Family members said the friend Ledger worked with is unaccounted for. -1 Comparisons in terror World Trade Center, Alfred Murrah Building, New York City_ Oklahoma City_ Date: Feb. 26,1993 Group responsible: Muslim fundamentalists associated with Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman. Casualties: 6 dead, 1000 injured Type of attack: Bomb constructed of fertilizer and fuel delivered in a rented van. Date: April 19,1995 Group responsible: Unknown. No group has claimed responsibility Casualties: At least 52 dead, 400+ injured Type of attack: 1,000- to 1,200-pound bomb similar to one used in World Trade Center, delivered by car. AF