Oklahoma City After the Bomb

In April 1995 a devastating bomb ripped through the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and 168 people died and many more were injured. Numerous investigations tracked what happened before the bombing. Now Emma Barnett travels to Oklahoma City to find out what happened afterwards.

Speaking to survivors and to those left behind, to first responders and state officials, Emma hears stories of resilience, defiance and success against the odds. She finds something more than that, too. Visiting the Oklahoma City memorial, she hears about the ‘Oklahoma Standard’, a phrase coined to describe how thousands of individuals, from a city and state built on notions of ‘rugged individualism’, came together to support those who suffered, and those who came to help.

And she hears how the ‘Oklahoma Standard’ helped give the city an identity it had previously lacked, providing a platform to transform the city both psychologically and physically.

Emma hears another side to this story, too. The money donated after the bombing was used to cover healthcare, education and counselling costs. But then, after the families who suffered in the 9/11 attacks in New York City received millions of dollars of compensation, those in Oklahoma City began to feel that they had been left to fend for themselves.

(Photo: Ellajean Thompson mourns at the chair that represents her aunt Laura Jane Garrison, 11 June 2001, Oklahoma National Memorial. Credit: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)