Oklahoma City Bombing Research Articles

Problems and Needs Persist for Oklahoma City Bombing Survivors Many Years Later.

Background: This study assesses long-term physical and emotional symptoms and unmet needs in direct survivors of the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist bombing 18 ½ years after the event. Methods: A telephone questionnaire assessed psychiatric symptoms, health problems and coping strategies in 138 terrorism survivors (of whom 80% were physically injured) from a state registry of directly exposed persons, and 171 non-exposed community controls. Structured survey questions measured psychiatric symptoms, posttraumatic growth, general health problems and health care utilization. Open-ended questions explored survivors’ most important terrorism-related problems and needs. Quantitative and qualitative data analysis methods were undertaken. Results: Survivors reported similar rates of major health problems and general health care utilization, more anxiety and depression symptoms, and more ancillary health care use than controls on structured assessments. Survivors also reported posttraumatic growth, using several positive coping skills. Open-ended questions identified survivors’ specific continuing bombing-related problems, and needs which were not disclosed on the questionnaire; these included many lasting physical injuries, health problems (especially hearing difficulties), specific posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, other emotional symptoms, work and financial problems, interpersonal issues, and desires to help others. Conclusions: Results suggest that extended recovery services are needed long after terrorism exposure, and that open-ended assessment is useful to identify those requiring services.

Children's Exposure to Single Incidents of Terrorism: Perspectives Over 25 Years Since the Oklahoma City Bombing.

This paper traces advances in our knowledge about children's exposure and reactions to terrorist events over the last 25years, beginning with the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, and offers observations about cross-cutting issues including implications for services. Direct and indirect interpersonal exposures have been examined in community samples and in samples of children selected because of their event experiences. Despite its present exclusion from the stressor criterion for a diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder, considerable research has documented an association between children's initial subjective reaction and outcomes. Few studies have examined the influence of community or distant effects on outcomes, but contact with media coverage has been well studied. This review confirms the central role of exposure in influencing children's reactions to terrorist incidents and supports recent efforts to distinguish specific experiences that constitute children's event exposures.

Architektura pomników poświęconych ofiarom ataków terrorystycznych jako kontynuacja realizacji komemoratywnych kształtowanych w postpamięci

architecture of Memorials Dedicated to the Victims of terrorist attacks as a continuation of commemorative Structures created within Post-memory Having the rich art of commemorating events of the Second World War as a key reference, this article will try to show how contemporary architectural interven- tions in public space make attempts to respond to the social need of dealing with traumatic events and formulating a new attitude towards threatened places. The point of reference for our reflections will be the events affecting contemporary city in the 21th century associated with terrorist attacks. In order to determine types of architectural narratives about traumatic events developed in urban space, some memorial places in Europe and the USA will be analysed (e.g. Atocha station in Madrid, 9/11 Memorial in New York, Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial). Referring to examples of memorials and monuments, we will look at contempo- rary tendencies in designing commemorative architecture and how architecture reflects and supports the social and individual process of trauma recovery.

Workshop: Terrorist attacks and aftercare

Abstract In recent years several European countries have been confronted with terrorist attacks. Since the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, there has been a growing evidence of trauma-research showing that survivors and witnesses of such attacks not only are affected physically, often with serous injuries, but also often experience severe mental health problems, such as PTSD, depression, or anxiety, which can take months or years to fade away. Moreover, such impact not only affect directly involved, but also indirectly involved persons (e.g. relatives of victims) and even the broader population. Terrorism has become a public health issue, challenging researchers to profoundly study determinants of terrorism as well as the ways of how to organise and install adequate preparedness before and proper responses and effective healthcare for populations in need after an attack. Until now, aftercare for people directly or indirectly affected by terrorist attacks and for the broader population gets rather little scientific attention. How did the health care services respond to such attacks? How should they respond and why? Were these services adequately prepared? Have survivors sought out help themselves? While there is an increasing body of knowledge on the association between a terrorist attack and PTSD, depression or other mental health problems, there is little known on the psychological aid that was given, and to whom this was given. In this workshop, research findings on aftercare after terrorism will be presented and discussed. Four researchers from three different European countries confronted with terrorist attacks in recent years (France, Belgium and Norway) will present their findings. Dr. Cécile Vuillermoz will present data on the immediate and long-term aftercare for civilians following the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in January 2015 in France, while Dr. Stephanie Vandentorren will present data on the psychosocial aid provided to directly exposed, witnesses and relatives after these attacks. Drs. Roel Van Overmeire will focus on the psychosocial aid offered to rescue workers shortly after the attacks in Belgium, and the months and years after. Finally, Dr. Lise Eilin Stene will give a presentation on current problems of healthcare in Europe in reaching those inflicted by terrorism and other traumatic events, while pointing to solutions and challenges for the future. Key messages More research is necessary to find adequate ways of reaching vulnerable people in need of psychosocial aid after terrorist attacks. More scientific insight is needed in the mental health impact of and the proper psychosocial aid response after large-scale traumatic events, in the direct aftermath as well as in the long term.

Secure Pesticide Storage: Security Against Terrorist Threats

Many farmers and managers of pesticide storage facilities had concerns about biosecurity and agroterrorism even before the Oklahoma City bombing and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on our nation. Businesses that manufacture, reformulate, sell, distribute, transport, store, or apply pesticides have long known the mitigation steps for safety of their workers, customers and communities. In todays age, these efforts may not necessarily be enough. This document is PI-42, one of a series of the Pesticide Information Office, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Original publication date May 2005.

No Victims Without Sacrifice, No Sacrifice Without Victims: The 'Oklahoma City Bombing' and the Conceptualization of Violence

This paper proposes a conceptualization of political violence that builds around the tripartite relationship between violence, victims, and sacrifice, making violence a self-justifying sacrificial act. The conceptualization delineates the nature of violence by addressing its transformation from an instrumental act to a constitutional one. This relationship makes violence possible, ongoing, contagious, and productive. To illustrate the epistemological value of this conceptualization that takes into account the relationship between violence, victims and sacrifice, the paper re-examines Timothy McVeigh’s justification for his Oklahoma City bombing. The example also illuminates the correlative threats of far-right terrorism and contemporary terrorism. The article concludes that the proposed conceptualization of violence is not only engrained in terrorism’s atrocities but also in the response to acts of political violence by turning, for example, to torture.

Oklahoma City Bombing

The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the deadliest terrorist attack in the United States prior to September 11th, 2001, provides valuable insights into many of the key homeland security challenges faced by a diverse Republic like the United States. These tactical, operational, and strategic-level challenges include but are not limited to: communication; operations and logistics; victim and family support; public perception, media, and information dissemination; the tensions between liberty and security in law and policymaking; and the relationship between the executive and legislative branches and their roles and tendencies during and after a national security crisis. Although the aftermath was marked by resilience in the face of great tragedy and some noteworthy successes, this article analyzes the effectiveness of the tiered, progressive emergency response, particularly highlighting shortcomings, broader implications, and impacts for the U.S. and other republics in their approach to dealing with terrorism and homeland security incidents moving forward.

Survivor Trees: Spectrality and Stickiness

ABSTRACTSurvivor trees are those which have survived disasters. They are often the only things left following the destruction of buildings by earthquakes, tsunamis, atomic blasts, and bombings. Survivor trees are located within the discourses of architecture and landscape architecture. This paper focuses particularly on the affectiveness of trees, their generation of emotions, and their propagation of atmosphere. Survivor trees at sites such as 9/11, the Oklahoma bombing, and the Japanese tsunami become affectively “sticky,” as places of emotional intensification with traces of the spectral. Haunting and affect theory are closely entwined, and both tune into the often invisible pulses that activate elements of the landscape. Both are entwined with the extraordinary and the supernatural, with heightened feelings, shivers and shimmers. This intensity of affect and haunting generates an affective atmosphere, that elusive aura which permeates places and moments with special feeling. Affective atmospheres suffuse us with intangible emotional presence; with survivor trees, this brings a strange familiarity, an uncanniness. The names given to survivor trees, such as “witness” or “seeing,” emphasise this haunting, affective resonance. Negative emotions and associations stick to survivor trees as well, including the trees who refuse to completely die – the zombie trees, whose haunting becomes something sinister.

Shootings at Pittsburgh Synagogue Raise Anxiety Over More Hate Crimes

Shootings at Pittsburgh Synagogue Raise Anxiety Over More Hate Crimes

The Pransky interview: Professor Robin R. Murphy, Co-founder of the Field of Disaster Robotics and Founder of Roboticists Without Borders

Purpose This paper is a “Q&A interview” conducted by Joanne Pransky of Industrial Robot Journal as a method to impart the combined technological, business and personal experience of a prominent, robotic industry engineer-turned successful innovator and leader regarding the challenges of bringing technological discoveries to fruition. This paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach The interviewee is Dr Robin R. Murphy, Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, Texas A&M University; Co-lead, Emergency Informatics EDGE Innovation Network Center, Texas A&M, Director of the Humanitarian Robotics and AI Laboratory and Vice President of the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue (CRASAR) http://crasar.org. In this interview, Dr Murphy provides answers to questions regarding her pioneering experiences in rescue robotics. Findings As a child, Dr Murphy knew she wanted to be a mechanical engineer and obtained her BME degree from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). While working in industry after her BME, she fell in love with computer science and received an MS and PhD in Computer Science at Georgia Tech where she was a Rockwell International Doctoral Fellow. In the mid-1990s, while teaching at the Colorado School of Mines, she pioneered rescue robots after one of her graduate students returned from the Oklahoma City bombing and suggested that small rescue robots should be developed for future disasters. The National Science Foundation awarded Murphy and her students the first grant for search-and-rescue robots. She has since assisted in responses at more than 20 worldwide disasters, including Hurricane Katrina, the Crandall Canyon Mine collapse, the Tohoku Tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. Originality/value The response to the World Trade Center attacks after September 11, 2001 by Dr Murphy’s team from the University of South Florida (the only academic institution), along with four other teams brought together by CRASAR, marked the first recorded use of a rescue robot at a disaster site. In addition to being a founder in the field of rescue robots, she is also a founder in the field of human–robot interaction and the Roboticists Without Borders. She has written over 100 publications and three books: the best-selling textbook, Introduction to AI Robotics, Disaster Robotics and Robotics-Through-Science-Fiction: Artificial Intelligence Explained Six Classic Robot Short Stories. Dr Murphy has received approximately 20 national awards and honors including: the AUVSI’s Al Aube Outstanding Contributor Award, the Eugene L. Lawler Award for Humanitarian Contributions within Computer Science and Informatics, CMU Field Robotics Institute “Pioneer in Field Robotics” and TIME Magazine, Innovators in Artificial Intelligence. She is an IEEE Fellow.

From Memory to Memorial: Shanksville, America, and Flight 93

From Memory to Memorial: Shanksville, America, and Flight 93

The Association Between Dissatisfaction with Debriefing and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in Rescue and Recovery Workers for the Oklahoma City Bombing.

The purpose of this study was to investigate potential association between psychopathology and subjective evaluation of the experience of debriefing in disaster-exposed rescue and recovery workers. Structured diagnostic interviews for DSM-III-R psychiatric disorders were conducted with 166 firefighters who served as rescue and recovery workers for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, who categorized their satisfaction with the debriefing on 4 levels. "Very dissatisfied" responses were examined for their association with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and with PTSD symptom groups. Being "very dissatisfied" with the debriefing was significantly associated with the DSM-III-R avoidance and numbing group and with PTSD. These findings suggest that debriefing may be an unsatisfactory intervention for people with prominent avoidance and numbing symptoms, such as those with PTSD. These individuals might be better served by referral directly to psychiatric treatment (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2018;12:718-722).

Media Effects in Youth Exposed to Terrorist Incidents: a Historical Perspective.

This paper reviews the evidence on the relationship between contact with media coverage of terrorist incidents and psychological outcomes in children and adolescents while tracing the evolution in research methodology. Studies of recent events in the USA have moved from correlational cross-sectional studies examining primarily television coverage and posttraumatic stress reactions to longitudinal studies that address multiple media forms and a range of psychological outcomes including depression and anxiety. Studies of events in the USA-the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the September 11 attacks, and the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing-and elsewhere have used increasingly sophisticated research methods to document a relationship between contact with various media forms and adverse psychological outcomes in children with different event exposures. Although adverse outcomes are associated with reports of greater contact with terrorism coverage in cross-sectional studies, there is insufficient evidence at this time to assume a causal relationship. Additional research is needed to investigate a host of issues such as newer media forms, high-risk populations, and contextual factors.

Triumph of the Till

Triumph of the Till

Apportioning Culpability in Multiple Perpetrator Acts of Terrorism

The Depravity Standard instrument was developed to operationalize depraved elements of crimes. It consists of 25items that were derived using multiple sources of data, including case reviews, input from professionals, and over 40,000 survey respondents. This paper presents preliminary data on the use of the Depravity Standard in cases with multiple perpetrators, examining its efficacy in differentiating the culpability of co-conspirators in a terrorist act. The US has been the site of three high-profile terrorist events with dual perpetrators: the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing by ex-U.S. Military acquaintances Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols; the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing by brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev; and the 2015 San Bernardino mass shooting by husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik. In this pilot project, two independent raters applied the 25 items of the Depravity Standard to each of the six perpetrators to determine which of each pair was the more culpable. Interclass correlation coefficients revealed a high degree of agreement between the raters, attesting to the reliability of the Depravity Standard items. Examination of the total number of Depravity Standard items present reveals McVeigh was more culpable than Nichols. The other four perpetrators were similarly culpable to their partners. These current findings indicate that the Depravity Standard is a promising instrument to determine comparative culpability in terrorist actions with multiple perpetrators. Ongoing analyses of public participation data indicate some items to be more indicative of depravity than others, and future analyses will compare weighted scores. Keywords: forensic science, crime severity, the Depravity Standard, terrorism, criminal culpability

Temporal trends in US counterterrorism sting operations, 1989–2014

ABSTRACTHow has the US government’s use of counterterrorism sting operations changed over the past quarter-century? Have major terrorist attacks led to more frequent sting operations and/or more frequent entrapment – and if so, have such changes been temporary or long-lasting? Have different types of terrorism provoked different reactions? This study answers these questions using a database of US terrorism prosecutions occurring between 1989 and 2014, each coded for 20 indicators of entrapment. We analyse temporal trends, and in particular, compare the government’s responses to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 terror attacks. Results indicate that after the Oklahoma City bombing, the number of sting operations against right-wing extremists doubled, while the average number of entrapment indicators dropped. This suggests that authorities in the 1990s responded to the growing threat of right-wing terrorism appropriately: conducting more investigations while avoiding entrapment. After 9/11, sting operations against suspected jihadi terrorists rapidly increased, but in this case, they featured high numbers of entrapment indicators through the end of the study period, suggesting widespread and persistent entrapment. Reasons for this difference, and for the government’s failure to reduce entrapment in response to widespread criticism over the past decade, are analysed.

Pop Songs and Solastalgia in a Broken City

Pop Songs and Solastalgia in a Broken City

A review of terrorism and its reduction of the gender ratio at birth after seasonal adjustment

BackgroundMales are born in excess of females, a ratio expressed as M/T (males:total births). The ratio exhibits seasonal variation. Furthermore, acute stressful events may result in a transient dip in male births due to excess foetal losses, reducing M/T. AimsThis study was carried out in order to identify significant M/T dips after adjusting for seasonality. Study designLive births by gender and month were sought for acute stressful events. After seasonal correction (where appropriate), M/T dips were sought. SubjectsLive births. Outcome measuresM/T dips. Results and conclusionsThis paper studied 112,226,306 live births. The following events showed dips ≤5th percentile 3–5months after these acute episodes: the Brooklyn Bridge protests, Katrina Hurricane for all 4 states and for each individual state (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi), the Battle in Seattle, the London bombings, The Madrid bombings (for Madrid and for Spain), the Breivik shooting, the Oklahoma City bombing and the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University shooting the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster also showed dips albeit slightly later.Seasonal adjustments should be taken into consideration in order to avoid Type 1 or 2 error pitfalls.

War and Children

War and Children

The Art of Judgement: An Organizational Analysis of the New York City Fire Department, September 11,2001 (A Case Study) [Analysis and Commentary

I will argue that stories told by managers, and the subsequent judgments they make in the actual work, are an effective way to communicate useful knowledge to students and practitioners of public administration. The recent tragedy in New York City produced a massive response by many government agencies. The New York Fire Department was on the scene of the devastation early and had primary responsibility for safety and rescue. Nearly three thousand people died as a result of the calamity, including many firemen. The event produced a complex set of administrative problems that are worthy of investigation. Using a case study approach, I will examine the ability of administrators and workers to adapt to the chaotic milieu. In order to accomplish this task, I will be applying aspects of Sir Geoffrey Vickers' "appreciative systems" theory, Alfred Shutz's "social construction" theory, and Ralph Hummel's “bureaucratic experience" theory in the analysis. Additionally, I will be comparing another event, the Oklahoma City bombing, and the actions taken by the OCFD administrative leadership. The objective of the study comparison is to learn from experiences to yield new management insights and to enhance public administration.