The long aftermath

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, July 14th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Digging through the wreckage.

More than 30 years ago, firefighter Chris Fields was on the scene when a bomb exploded in downtown Oklahoma City.

REICHARD: The Oklahoma City bombing was the deadliest terror attack America had yet seen. Fields says it’s reverberated far beyond that day.

WORLD’s Abby Young has the story.

SOURCE: If you are anywhere downtown you probably heard it and felt it, an explosion of some kind downtown Oklahoma City.

SOURCE: The roar of the whole building crumbling.

SOURCE: It is emotional, I’ve met firefighters coming out of the building with tears in their eyes.

SOURCE: At the center of it all is the bombed out shell of the federal office building.

The morning of April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields felt the blast and saw the black smoke from his fire station. He and his unit rushed to the Murrah Federal Building.

FIELDS: It looked like a war zone, you know, I know it was one building, there was hundreds of buildings damaged, there was one building right in front of us, nine stories completely, you know, pancaked down on top of each other.

Fields spent the day searching for people in the rubble. He had just helped recover a woman trapped under debris when he encountered a police officer. The officer handed him a baby covered in dust, and told him she was in critical condition.

FIELDS: I had to clean some concrete dust out of her throat, and she had an open little, open skull fracture, and so I kept looking for signs of life, I couldn't find any.

The baby was one-year-old Baylee Almon. As Fields waited for a paramedic, he paused to look at the child cradled in his arms. He thought of his own two-year-old son.

FIELDS: I knew exactly what I was doing, and I was just thinking, I was looking at her, thinking somebody’s world is going to be turned upside down today.

Fields didn’t know it, but a freelance photographer snapped a photo. Baylee died later that day.

The Associated Press distributed the photo worldwide, and it later received a Pulitzer Prize.

In the weeks after the bombing, Fields and other first responders spent 12-hour shifts digging through the ruins for bodies. He said it was damp and cold inside the building.

FIELDS: It was, like… the quiet. I remember how quiet it was.

Search and rescue teams came from across the country to help. They worked until the building was imploded a few weeks later. Fields says the memories are haunting.

FIELDS: There’s a lot of stuff the outside world doesn’t need to know, you know, about search and rescue and recovery and things that they shouldn’t have to experience or hear about.

Like many firefighters, Fields spent years bottling up his emotional pain. He occasionally experienced depression and anger, but thought he’d moved on.

Until about 15 years later, while renovating his back patio, Fields smelled wet concrete.

FIELDS: I caught a smell of it, and in my mind I thought, my gosh, this is just like the building, being inside the building. I mean, it took me back, I could picture myself in there.

That was the moment everything fell apart. His depression and anger worsened, he began an affair, and got addicted to Xanax. He said he was an absent father to his two sons and a horrible husband to his wife, Cheryl.

FIELDS: Doing what I thought was best for Chris Fields, or what Chris Fields wanted to do, not, you know, not worrying about what I was destroying in the, in the wake.

Fields left Cheryl and their sons and moved out.

During their year-and-a-half-long separation, Cheryl prayed fervently for her husband’s healing. But Fields had given up hope.

FIELDS: I just thought one night, if I could mix up enough Xanax and alcohol that if I didn’t wake up the next day, everybody would start afresh.

But he did wake up. He grabbed his phone, called Cheryl, and asked to come home.

FIELDS: She didn’t even hesitate. God gave her the grace to forgive me immediately, and she said, ‘Well, come on.’

Fields went to a rehab facility for trauma therapy. He moved back home, and he and his wife went to counseling and restored their marriage. Today, Fields still talks about Cheryl’s forgiveness with tears in his eyes.

FIELDS: The things I put her through are… I mean, it’s just ridiculous that she stands beside me today.

Fields encourages first responders to process their trauma before it spirals out of control, like his did.

FIELDS: You do not have to wait until the wheels fall off before you reach out, reach out for help. That was my biggest issue.

Decades after the bombing, Fields knows that first responders everywhere need support from people they know and those they don’t.

FIELDS: Keep them in your thoughts and prayers, of course the families and the victims, but also the first responders and their families, what they’re going through.

Now retired, Fields works for Oklahoma’s First Responder Wellness Division and often speaks to first responders about trauma. When he speaks, he always honors baby Baylee and the 167 others killed in Oklahoma City.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Abby Young.

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