They had no way of knowing that a cop had already found the battered little girl and handed her off to the nearest firefighter, Fields. That somebody was Baylee's mom, Aren, who by that time was with her own sister, racing back-and-forth between hospitals trying to find the baby with the white socks. "I'm just standing there looking at her and, in my mind, I'm thinking somebody's world is getting ready to be turned upside down." And I didn't find any signs of life," Fields said. "I had to clean some concrete dust or insulation stuff out of her throat trying to open her airway. In the distance, two photographers captured the moment, as Fields waited for the EMTs to get ready to take the child. "I just remember saying, 'Here, I'll take her.' He handed me Baylee and he was gone back into the building." "You know, my mom always said, 'There's a reason it was you,'" said Fields, whose own son had just turned 2 when the bomb went off. A gentleman just, I mean, it was like he just appeared in front of me and said 'I have a critical infant.'" "And walking to the south side of the building with my crew, there was three other guys with me. "We were told by our incident commander to go to the south side of the building and we were going to be given our assignment," Fields said in an interview. They sped to get as close as they could until they just had to leave their vehicles and run the rest of the way over streets covered in glass and debris.įields, a trained hazmat expert and one of the department's senior officers, had just gotten to the firehouse for the day shift when the bomb went off. Some were already on the clock and had their equipment others rushed in from home, wearing only street clothes. "I have babies in the federal building," one woman screamed to rescuers. They had no idea what caused the explosion they knew only there were people who needed to be rescued or saved, and still others who were gone but whose bodies had to be delivered to their families. In the minutes right after the bomb tore apart the Murrah building, first responders from all over the state rushed to the scene. I mean, I was going to have to - at the age of 22 - bury a child." Or if it was just the fact that - I mean, I had so much other things on my mind. I don't know if it's because I was so young and just maybe naive. When I saw the paper, I was like, 'That's Baylee.'"Īlmon said she "had no idea the impact that it was going to have, no idea. "Those were the clothes that I put on her that morning. "I recognized her right away," Almon said, recalling the moment she first saw the image that would be burned into America's psyche. The photograph came to symbolize the bombing. A little girl, covered in dirt, bloody and near death, cradled in the arms of Oklahoma City Fire Capt. It thundered through the American heartland, changing everything for the Almon family, changing everything for the families of all 168 people killed, for the families of the more than 500 injured, for Oklahoma City - and for much of a nation that might have believed peace was at hand once the Cold War ended just a few years earlier.įor Almon, the anniversary also means returning to a photograph that shocked and devastated a nation when it appeared in newspapers across the country. Then, at 9:02 a.m., a shock wave was unleashed by the truck bomb on the street below. The next morning, April 19, 1995, Baylee's mom, Aren, dropped her off at day care - on the second floor of the Alfred P. Normally, it was just the two of them, but that was a night to celebrate and the extended-family gathering at their apartment in Oklahoma City was to be the first of many the cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles would mark together. It's a cliché to say the baby was her mother's light, but she was. The blast came only hours after the Almon family gathered to celebrate the first birthday of little Baylee.
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