THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, April 21, 1995 TAG: 9504210508
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A6 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MIKE MATHER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: OKLAHOMA CITY LENGTH: Medium: 62 lines
A Virginia Beach search-and-rescue team has joined the around-the-clock effort to find survivors among 150 people now believed buried in the wreckage of a bomb-shattered federal building.
The team reached Oklahoma City late Thursday afternoon. In a quick briefing, they were told they face four or five days of grueling work.
An Oklahoma City Fire Department spokesman, who praised the Virginia Beach group as one of the most highly trained in the country, said the team will work ``side by side'' with local rescue teams and similar urban search and rescue crews being brought in from around the nation.
The outside help will give overworked Oklahoma rescue workers a break, the spokesman said, and could bring in fresh ideas and perspectives in the effort to find survivors.
Upon arrival in Oklahoma City about 4 p.m. Thursday, team members were taken to a staging area at the Marriott Convention Center where they received a detailed briefing from local search and rescue coordinators. They were shown a video - not released publicly - taken inside the wreckage.
The local team - Virginia Task Force 2 - left Norfolk Naval Air Station aboard an Air Force A-141 just before noon, about 10 hours after being ordered to Oklahoma. The team had been on standby since the bomb detonated, killing dozens of workers and children.
Firefighters and rescue workers from as many as six Hampton Roads agencies are members of the 56-person crew that began assembling around 2 a.m. at the Fire Training Center on Birdneck Road.
They packed a trailer full of concrete-cutting tools, groceries for several days and two dogs trained to sniff out bodies. They loaded the trailer onto the plane from Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina for the four-hour flight to Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma.
This is the first time the area's Federal Emergency Management Agency urban rescue team has been sent to a national disaster. On three earlier occasions, the team was put on standby but never used, said Fire Department spokesman Mike Wade.
The team's main job will be to search for victims using both sensitive listening devices and small cameras, and concrete-shredding tools and drills. MEMO: Staff writer Steve Stone contributed to this story.
ILLUSTRATION: Photos
BILL TIERNAN/Staff
Local members of the FEMA team leave the Norfolk Naval Air
Station, bound for Oklahoma City, Thursday morning.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Rescue workers at the Alfred Murrah Federal Building continue their
search for survivors in the rubble of Wednesday's bombing.
KEYWORDS: BOMBS EXPLOSIONS FATALITIES TERRORISM
OKLAHOMA CITY RELIEF by CNB