Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, April 23, 1993 TAG: 9304230048
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAIME ARON ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WACO, TEXAS LENGTH: Medium
He left his fancy third-floor bedroom with all the amenities and began looking around the more spartanly decorated house, making sure women and children were secure and checking that everyone had their gas masks on properly.
As he strode the halls, Koresh saw Steve Schneider, his right-hand man, sitting on the floor listening to a portable radio through headphones.
He was listening to his own impending death.
Within hours, the cult compound became an inferno. Only nine Branch Davidians escaped the pyre to tell how the 51-day standoff ended.
This is their story, gleaned from lawyers who spoke with six of them now jailed on charges that include conspiracy and murder:
Schneider was frustrated. The radio was his only contact with the outside world since he ripped out the compound's only phone line that morning in a tantrum after federal officials delivered an ultimatum.
FBI agents - weary of waiting for Koresh, Schneider and the other 93 Branch Davidians - called before dawn Monday, saying this was the cult's last chance: Come out or prepare to get forced out.
They kept their word. By dawn, tanks were battering the Mount Carmel compound, punching for hours at its walls again and again to break them open for the gas to come.
The Davidians, meanwhile, kept to their daily routines.
Strapped into gas masks, the women tended to laundry. Others read their Bibles in their rooms. The 17 children, all under 10 years old, remained on the second floor by their mothers' sides.
Still, it was hard to ignore what was happening around them.
Each punch from a tank violently rattled the poorly constructed building. Cult members dodged falling sheet rock and doors. Nozzles on the tanks and hundreds of gas canisters hurled in from the armored vehicles were filling the air with noxious fumes.
The flying canisters were more frightening than the more visible tanks. At least one man was hit in the face.
The gas began filling the air, swirling from room to room and floor to floor, driven by heavy gusts of wind through the windows and holes the tanks made.
The currents created deceptively safe air pockets.
Thinking he was in a safe spot, one man slipped off his gas mask to drink a glass of water. In seconds his dry throat burned, his eyes watered and his skin crawled.
Staying where they were, scattered throughout the house, they made no effort to gather. But they seemed to be thinking in concert: The government's action was infuriating them all and only strengthened their resolve.
They would never come out now.
Then the FBI sent in its biggest weapon - a massive armored vehicle larger than the others and headed for a chamber lined with cinder blocks where authorities hoped to find Koresh and Schneider and fire tear gas directly at them.
When the tank rumbled in, it produced such trembling it felt like an earthquake.
The tank took out everything in its path. The front door went. So did an upright piano standing as a barricade behind it.
Here their story diverges from the government's version.
The FBI says cult members set the fire in three places, and fuel sprinkled throughout the compound let the flames quickly spread.
But each of the six surviving cult members, in separate discussions with lawyers, consistently gave versions at odds with the FBI's account.
They say the tank took out a barrel of propane, flattening the container and spilling its contents. And as the tank thundered through the house it tipped over lit camping lanterns, spitting flames that ignited the propane and other flammables.
The home - built of used lumber, plywood and sheetrock, and tacked together with tar paper - was vulnerable to any spark.
All three floors also were littered with linens, cardboard and hay bales used to cover windows blown out in the government's botched raid on Feb. 28.
The building erupted. It happened too fast to pull fire extinguishers from the walls. Clumsy gas masks clouded up in the black smoke and sheets of sweat induced by 1,000-degree-plus heat.
Nine Davidians escaped by jumping from windows and dashing through other openings. Others died groping in the blackness.
In 45 minutes the compound was gone, along with as many as 86 lives. All that remained was a pile of ashes, a charred watchtower and a slew of questions.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB