OKLAHOMA CITY – On the land where 168 people perished in a terrorist attack six years ago, the flags fluttered at half-staff Tuesday. The nearby streets were empty, barricaded by hastily installed orange-and-white barrels.
"You can feel death in the skies right now," said Paul Riley of Marietta, Okla., as he and his wife, Gayle, visited the Oklahoma City National Memorial just hours after planes crashed into the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
"It seems spooky," Mrs. Riley said.
It was more than spooky for survivors of the April 19, 1995, truck bombing. It was a flashback to the horrors of a brilliant spring morning when Timothy McVeigh, who was executed this year, parked a rental truck in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, lighted the fuse to a 7,000-pound fertilizer and fuel bomb and walked away.
"I just started feeling anxiety, like my heart was racing, having trouble breathing," said Priscilla Salyers, a former U.S. Customs Service worker who fell five stories in the blast but survived with broken ribs and a punctured lung.
Now a Secret Service employee, Ms. Salyers said she was so stunned by Tuesday's attacks in New York and Washington that she dropped out of a computer training course and went straight to work, hoping it would help her cope with the flood of memories.
"This is very, very difficult. Everybody is watching the TV, but I cannot. I walk by them and I kind of glance ..."
"My heart goes out to families and survivors who are getting ready to go through all this surviving. I'm also very, very angry that we're being forced to go through this fear that people are feeling."
"When is this thing going to end? This is like a bad movie," Florence Rogers,who was in the Federal Employees Credit Union offices during the blast, told The Associated Press.
"It's breaking my heart to watch this," said another survivor, Susan Walton, who also was in the credit union during the blast.
Gov. Frank Keating and state officials who helped steer Oklahoma through the 1995 bombing quickly pledged to support emergency rescue efforts, noting that some New York and Washington-area emergency personnel helped search through the Murrah Building's rubble in search of victims.
"We stand willing to help in any way," the governor said.
Mr. Keating said he triggered an emergency plan that includes mobilizing the Oklahoma National Guard to help transport blood and other items to New York or Washington.