Application 95-501 for a groundwater permit. My name is Lou Claver.

At 9 o'clock on the morning of April 19, 1995, Lou Claver of the Oklahoma City Water Resources Board in the United States

was convening a hearing about a routine permit application.

I can with regard to this application to determine whether to recommend to the board that they grants this permit.

But just a minute and 33 seconds after the meeting began, a massive explosion ripped through a US government

office building nearby. This tape of the hearing managed to catch the moment of

the explosion and the aftershocks as they rippled across the city. I'm Emma Bonet and for BBC World Service two decades on from that bombing which is still the largest domestic terrorist attack on US soil

I've come to Oklahoma City and I've been talking to survivors of the

blast, to relatives of the 168 people who died, to those who rushed to help, and

to those whose job it was later to rebuild the city about what really

happened here after 9.02 a.m. on that fateful day.

We have a lot of injured people, probably a lot of of dead people because that's a federal office building that was blown in half

A friend came up to me and when she came up to me she gasped and she said well they can do a lot with plastic surgeons these days.

I've heard about how the attack here by an angry and disenchanted former American soldier

affected tens of thousands of people's lives and

forever changed the face of this city.

This is my job, this is my city, this is my community, this is what I took an oath to do and I'm going to do it.

I'm going to do it the best of my ability and I'll cope with these things.

Evil was somewhere else. It wasn't right here in Oklahoma.

That was sad to me that things couldn't continue like they had always been.

The prosecutors was talking about these key witnesses and I remember leaning over to her

and saying,

...