Former News 9 Reporter Recalls Seeing OKC Bombing From Ranger 9

The day of the Oklahoma City bombing, Ranger 9, now SkyNews 9, flew over the scene to give us the first glimpse of the devastation.

Friday, April 17th 2015, 10:57 pm

By: News 9


The day of the Oklahoma City bombing, Ranger 9, now SkyNews 9, flew over the scene to give us the first glimpse of the devastation. Inside the helicopter, reporter Jesse Gary's voice, shrouded in emotion, gave us those unforgettable first words.

"I remember looking at the building and for that first couple of seconds I was lost for words," said Jesse Gary, former News 9 reporter. "I was trying to process what I was seeing."

Then the words came.

"A third of the building has been blown away," he remembered saying. "Those first couple of words is [sic] a little bit halting. You don't want to give wrong information, you don't want to panic people but at the same time, this is actually happening. This is not a movie. This is actually real life. Somebody bombed a major building in downtown Oklahoma City.”

On that April 19, 1995 day, Gary spent the first part of his day reporting from the news helicopter. Then, he was sent to ground zero.

"It was a very sad scene. You think about the people that were injured, the people that were killed, you think about the children that were down in the daycare," he said. "I've never seen anything like that before. I pray I never see anything like it again."

Gary, now a reporter for WCAU NBC 10 in Philadelphia, said the bombing did change him as a journalist and as a person.

"It's made me much more empathetic and also I don't take anything for granted," he said. "I come to work but I know it's not guaranteed that I'm going to go home again."

When he thinks back about his time in Oklahoma City, Gary is amazed at how the city has recovered.

"I was there when the MAPS program was on the drawing board and they were talking about putting in an arena, hotel and a canal, and now you look at Oklahoma City and all of that is there," Gary said. "I hate the fact that that tragedy preceded all of this but it is heartening to know the city, the community could recover and grow and have a beautiful, vibrant downtown."

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