Masonry Magazine August 1995 Page. 8
FROM THE PRESIDENT
By L. C. PARDUE, JR.
President, Mason Contractors Association of America
Building to Lessen the Impact of Disaster
WHAT A TERRIBLE tragedy the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City was on April 19th. Following the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York, it appears that we could be in for a rash of bombings in years to come.
This is not the first time that cities in the United State have been devastated by explosives. In the late 50's the regulations for transporting explosive material was that trucks must exhibit a sign indicating what they were carrying and they must bypass any city or town or give notice that they intended to pass through so that special routes and plans could be implemented if necessary.
In mid-August of 1959 a truck carrying explosives stopped late one night in downtown Roseburg, Oregon, without signs and without notifying the local authorities that he intended to enter the city. The driver was tired and decided to stop over for the night. He parked his truck in a small industrial area within a few blocks of the downtown core area. The driver walked to the only hotel at the city's center, ate dinner and retired for the evening.
Around midnight a fire broke out in the building next to the parked truck. The sirens and commotion woke the driver who ran from the hotel towards the fire and his parked truck. No one really knows what transpired after that, except that the resulting blast completely leveled six to eight blocks in every direction killing all the fire men and the driver. If it had not been late at night many more people would have been killed.
At the time I was sixteen and working in the field in the summers while attending high school. Two day's after the blast I, along with four others from our company, were sent down from Portland to work with various insurance companies in regards to damage claims resulting from the explosion.
After we arrived we were issued passes which allowed us to enter restricted areas. A large portion of this downtown core area was blocked off and patrolled by the national guard and only those people with passes were allowed in.
The only thing standing in the immediate blast zone was a stone fireplace and half of an unreinforced block building a couple of blocks away. The rest of the area was completely leveled.
The insurance companies set up headquarters at the fire station with card tables and folding chairs to process claims. They filled out inspection slips and sent us out to inspect "blast" damage along with an estimate of the cost of repair, at which point they would give us the go ahead to fix the damage or wait for one of their adjusters to do a follow up inspection.
One of the first inspections was the brick hotel where the driver had been sleeping. The hotel was undamaged except for every window being blown in on the side facing the explosion. 1 will never forget how the carpets were covered with blood from the sleeping guests being cut by the flying glass.
Even though few were damaged by the explosion, every chimney for miles around was rebuilt by the insurance companies that year. The one inspection I will never forget was on the block basement of a house a good two miles from the downtown area on the far side of a hill.
The lady owner of the house told us that the blast had pushed the foundation wall in some 6 inches, opening up a horizontal crack about five feet up from the basement floor. She was hard pressed to explain how the ten year's worth of moss had grown in the crack within the last week.
I am sure that even though the Oklahoma City disaster is a major catastrophe there will be many similar humorous stories told.
Because of this disaster we will surely see a change in the constrution of many government and commercial buildings so that the effects of such a disaster can be lessened in the future. Hopefully we will never have to live through anything this horrible again.
-Lenny C. Pardue, President