Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 1, 1995 TAG: 9505020067
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: OKLAHOMA CITY LENGTH: Medium
Keating said the danger of a building collapse had grown so great in the 11 days since the explosion that it was no longer possible for rescuers to risk the search. Workers had been carefully tunneling through the debris in the hope of finding survivors.
``The decision's been made to use machinery. How soon that could be? It could be in the next day or so,'' he said after a briefing with Federal Emergency Management Administration officials and local firefighters.
``You reach a point where you don't jeopardize human beings in order to extract the dead."
Keating also said it is likely as many as 20 bodies may never be recovered, even with the use of machinery.
Earlier Sunday, rescuers crept gingerly through the federal building as engineers tried to reinforce weakened columns that threatened to collapse around them.
The death toll rose to 134 as more bodies were removed. Sixty-two people were missing, including eight children.
Six people were added to the list of missing Sunday after a Tulsa woman reported her relatives may have been trapped in the building. Authorities now believe the six may have been located, although they refused to elaborate.
In the ruins of the federal building, workers shored up two columns at the front of the building that were in danger of collapsing. They built 5-foot-tall steel boxes around the base of the columns and filled them with grout.
Structural engineers have been accompanying search teams, advising which directions are safe to tunnel and where strengthening is needed, said Maj. Pat Caraway of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
They use equipment that can detect an eighth of an inch of shifting in the building's load-bearing columns and exterior walls.
Structural engineers were seen examining various parts of the building, with as many as six visible on the roof at one time.
Workers reported seeing bodies behind the two columns in an area known as ``the pit,'' where nine floors collapsed into a heap of rubble that includes the ruins of a day care center and Social Security offices. The remains of many of the missing are believed to be in that area.
In churches throughout the city, services focused on the tragedy.
``What has happened here has not only touched the people of Oklahoma City, but it touched the people of the world,'' Tom Madden, a grief counselor from Cleveland, told worshipers at the First Baptist Church, where plywood covers the stained-glass windows knocked out by the blast. Madden was sent by the Bay Presbyterian Church in Cleveland to help.
``The process of healing begins shortly after the tragedy, and it continues for the rest of our lives,'' he said.
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB