Oklahoma City bombing: Survivor buried in rubble says coronavirus triggers turmoil she's not felt for 25 years

Interview: ‘The uncertainty, the grief. We’ve lost our own normal. We’re not sure what the new normal is’

In the 25 years since Amy Downs survived the Oklahoma City Building – buried in the rubble for more than six hours as she wondered if rescuers would get to her – she utterly transformed her life.

Fed up with the way she looked but seemingly unable to change it, she went on to lose more than 200lbs. Having earlier dropped out of college, she earned a Masters of Business Administration. Wanting to take on more challenges but unsure how to do so, she became a triathlete and competed in ironman competitions. Keen to share her lessons about the power of change with others, she became a motivational speaker.

And so the 53-year-old might have prepared for the jolt of this 25th anniversary of the attack on the Alfred P Murrah building in the centre of Oklahoma City as she has the others, until the coronavirus pandemic struck, and triggered emotions she has not felt for a quarter-century.

“It’s exactly like it,” she says from Oklahoma City, referring to the aftermath of the terror attack carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols on 19 April, 1995, and the impact of the virus.

“The uncertainty, the grief. We’ve lost our own normal. We’re not sure what the new normal is. I am telling you – this is April 19 all over again, even though this one’s obviously global and ours just happened to us.”

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She adds: “It was unprecedented when it happened in 1995. We had never had a domestic terrorist attack like that before in the United States. So we didn’t know how to navigate it. There was nobody to ask, like, okay, so what are the steps that I go through for getting over being blown up at work?”

Downs still works for the credit union once located in the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in the centre of Oklahoma City. She was there at 9.02am when McVeigh detonated a 4,800lb bomb packed into a Ryder truck, destroying a third of the building and sending her flying.

She spent more than six hours buried upside down, still sitting on her office chair, unable to see anything. When rescuers finally reached her, they quickly had to back away, having been told a second device was set to go off.

It was a false alarm, and the emergency crews returned for her. But in those moments, Downs was overwhelmed by the belief her life had been a waste.

“I’m lying there and I’m begging God for a second chance, because all of a sudden I realise I’m getting ready to die and I’m 355 pounds. I have been messing with my life,” she says. “I have all these regrets, and it’s too late.”

The lesson Downs shares with others – in addition to being a motivational speaker she has just published a book entitled Hope Is a Verb: My Journey of Impossible Transformation – is about the power of change. She says the ability to shift and move, to dodge and dart, lies within all of us, and that while we cannot determine what life may throw at us, we each have the power to decide how we respond to challenges.

In the context of the coronavirus pandemic that has infected 2.25m people globally and killed 150,000 – in the US those figures are 700,000 and 36,000 – Downs believe those who change will also be those who survive and perhaps even prosper.

“From a business standpoint, there are a lot of similarities. In order to navigate your business through a time like this…we have to respond by looking for opportunities,” she says.

“Obviously we’re all leaning into digital delivery options. These little stores that have been able to pivot, and suddenly will deliver, or will deliver for free. Those companies are still in business right now. They may be struggling, but they’re still in business.”

As an example from her own world she mentions the financial services industry, a sector she terms “traditional” and “old school”.

“There are financial institutions that are refusing to send their employees home to work remotely, because they think if they’re not working [in the office] they won’t know if they’re working,” she says.

“They’re not really been able to understand how to be a results-driven organisation and allow their employees to work from home. I’m really fortunate that at my organisation, we were already letting a lot of our employees work from home. We sent everybody home before it was mandated, for people to be safe.”

Downs began working for the Federal Employees Credit Union as a teller 32 years ago. It has now changed its name to the Allegiance Credit Union, and she is its CEO.

Downs has appeared on programmes such NBC's Today show to share the lessons of her experience (NBC News)

In the city that has remained her home, she is doing what she can to help local businesses get a break. (Her own personal contribution was to give away 100 copies of her book to a local bookstore after the virus scrapped traditional promotion efforts.)

She has also used a small amount of money in her non-profit company’s community fund, to try and help eateries in people’s neighbourhoods.

“We had about $2,000 ear-marked for community involvement. We took that money, we gave all of our employees $25 in their checking accounts and we asked them to go out and buy lunch or dinner from a local restaurant, to hashtag that restaurant, and promote that restaurant to their friends,” she says.

“That’s how we can respond right now. Instead of left fighting right, and poking at all the different things we can all poke at, and taking our anxiety out that way, let’s try to find some positive ways to do it. Let’s help each other.”

Asked what lessons she has for people on the 25th anniversary of the attack that destroyed, and changed so many lives, Downs says with a gentle laugh for people to buy her book.

“Hope takes action. And the action is in you. It’s not in somebody else. Hope is in ourselves, to take the action, to do the things to move us,” she says.

“Whether it’s us individually, as a country, as an organisation, whatever it is, you have to take responsibility for that. You can’t wait for somebody else to fix you, to solve your the problem. You have to do what you can do to make your life, your world – everything – better around you and for you. You do the action.”

She adds: “It’s all that cliche, of it’s not so much what happens to you, it’s how are you responding to it? What are you doing to respond to this?”