I was working as a temp at Fred Jones Manufacturing, about of mile, as the crow flies, from the Murrah building. The week before our fire alarms had gone off. Someone on the third floor had run into one of the sprinklers with a forklift. Because of all the volatile chemicals present in the building, once the alarms went off we had to evacuate, even though we knew in five minutes what had happened. But alarms in our building went off simultaneously at the nearest fire station so we were required to wait until we had an all clear from the firemen before we could return. When we felt the blast we just figured this time someone had dropped a forklift. We got up and prepared to head downstairs expecting to evacuate again. On our way to the stairs we looked in the offices to the east to see if they, too, were preparing to leave the building. ThatÂs when we saw the smoke and all the papers flying around in the street below us. All the plate glass windows on the ground floor shattered, and you could smell the stench. Many of the smaller windows on the upper floors were cracked, and the blast put a crack in the east wall of the building, originally completed in 1916, that was not there before. Two of the men I worked with lost their wives. They both worked for HUD and were at the sign-in desk when the bomb went off. One had been married about 12 years at the time. They had spent most of their first ten years of marriage trying to have a child. Finally, about a year before the bombing they had a little boy. Until about a month prior to the bombing he had been in the day care center in the Murrah building. They had taken him back the week before the bombing for a birthday party. They took lots of pictures of all the kids at the party. He was asked to take those pictures and go to Denver to testify during the sentencing phase of the trial. Poor man, he was so grief-stricken at losing his wife that he moved back in with his mother to have help with the little boy and never again lived in the house heÂd shared with his wife. Another man had a "near miss" with his wife. She also worked for HUD and, under normal circumstances, would have been right there with the other two menÂs wives, but her job involved travel to Indian communities. She had a regularly scheduled travel date that conflicted with their only childÂs, a daughter, soccer game so she traded and traveled on the 19th to be home for the girlÂs soccer game. My daughter and her best friend, just two years out of high school, were both working evening shifts. My daughter was waiting tables at a restaurant near our apartment, and her friend worked at the sign-in desk at what was then the Westin Hotel downtown. I think itÂs now a Sheraton. Being accustomed to staying up late they didnÂt wake up until maybe 10 am. Once they heard the news they took off together to see what they could do to help. First they tried the Oklahoma Blood Institute which had put out a call for O negative donations (my daughter is not O negative, not sure about her friend), but every donation center was swamped. They had to turn away people because there would simply not be enough time in the day to take that many donations. They went to a fabric store to buy ribbons. No ribbon color had yet been selected to represent the city and the tragedy so they picked purple. Late that first night they took their spools of ribbon downtown and tied them around all the poles along the marked off perimeter of the area. The next night a policeman would remember having seen my daughter tying ribbons. Next they tried volunteering for anything that was needed. Again, they were turned away everywhere because everyone was swamped with people volunteering to help. They finally managed to convince someone, Red Cross I think, that they had something to offer most of their other volunteers didnÂt. They were young, worked evenings, and were accustomed to being up very late. They could be there to help in the middle of the night when most of their other volunteers needed to get some rest. Mostly they just served drinks to the rescuers, police, and others working on the rescue effort. This is when the policeman remembered seeing my daughter tying ribbons the night before. My daughterÂs friend "caught" a rescue worker buying himself a soft drink from a vending machine on the hotelÂs first floor. She "scolded" him and pointed out that one flight up, on the Mezzanine, rescue workers were being provided drinks for free. I remember a news article where some of the rescuers who came from New York remarked about how in 1993, the first time the World Trade Center was attacked, street vendors showed up charging outrageous prices for coffee and sandwiches. Here, we pretty much fed them for free. Cots were set up in the convention center for the rescuers to sleep rather than them having to pay for hotel accommodations, and the governorÂs wife worked with local florists to see that a rose was placed on each cot every night. Whenever the rescue effort put out a call for supplies, I specifically remember boots for the search dogs, in short order they would be literally inundated. WeÂd hear the local news people ask for something then the next thing you hear is, "Please, we have enough of this, no more!" I have a friend who was still active in Boy Scouts then, both his sons were in Scouting. He remembers sitting at the Channel 5 location with a semi trailer taking donations. He says the line of cars waiting to drop things off was enormous. He especially remembers a little old lady; he says she probably could hardly walk, driving up bringing goods and then insisting on also writing a check to help out. Sometime in the late Â90s I took my first, and so far only, tour of the Crystal Bridge. I donÂt remember where in the gardens it is, and I donÂt even remember what exactly it is, but somewhere is a tree, small when I saw it, with a plaque in front of it that states the tree is a thank you gift to the city from rescuers who came from Arizona. I canÂt explain how perplexed I was when I read the plaque. They came to help us. It is we who should thank them, but there I was staring at a tree these Arizonans gave us in thanks. I think that gesture says a lot about who we are and how we were perceived in the immediate aftermath of the bombing. We have another anniversary this week. While the environmentalists co-opted it some years ago for "Earth Day" for me it will always be the anniversary of the run of Â89. Thousands of brave souls came looking for a new life, but one that they would have to carve out of the wilderness by their own efforts and hard work, having no one else to rely on but themselves and their neighbors. Less than twenty years later Oklahoma Territory joined with Indian Territory, another situation where people had to make a new life in the wilderness by their own work except that it was forced on them and not their choice, to form the State of Oklahoma. We are the sons, daughters, grandsons, and granddaughters of these pioneers. Through oil booms and busts and the associated economic ups and downs, the Dust Bowl, killer tornadoes, and the Murrah Building bombing we have continued to exhibit what Howard Witt, writing for the Chicago Tribune on the occasion of the bombingÂs 10th anniversary, called our "Âessential prairie stoicism--the same ÂOklahoma spirit for which they were lauded in the aftermath of the bombing, when Oklahomans demonstrated extraordinary decency, humility and bootstrap resiliency" based on "deep religious faith and unblushing middle American values." I agree with Dawn. April 19, 1995 was both our worst tragedy and our finest hour. I have never been more proud of my state and its people than I was in those dark days of April. IÂve always said that no matter how much nicer, prettier, easier other places might be to live, I wouldnÂt want to live anywhere else, and my fellow Okies are the reason. You are the best people in the world, and that goes just the same for all you "transplants" and "adoptees." YouÂre here now, and as my Granddad would say, "youÂre ourÂn." Debra

Wind turbines have been pretty tough on the raptor population here in CA. I'm much more excited about the possibility of learning from wind turbines technology applying it towards creating ocean turbines in the Pacific. Wave power can spin magnets (like all turbines) to create electricity directly (which requires a netwotk of cables for transmission) or it can be used for electrolysis of seawater to create hydrogen gas, it the US can ever get the hydrogen fuel cell to be practical. Wave power devices extract energy directly from surface waves or from pressure fluctuations below the surface. Renewable energy analysts believe there is enough energy in the ocean waves to provide up to 2 terawatts of electricity. (A terawatt is equal to a trillion watts.) Offshore systems are situated in deep water, typically of more than 40 meters (131 feet). Sophisticated mechanismsÂlike the Salter DuckÂuse the bobbing motion of the waves to power a pump that creates electricity. Other offshore devices use hoses connected to floats that ride the waves. The rise and fall of the float stretches and relaxes the hose, which pressurizes the water, which, in turn, rotates a turbine. Specially built seagoing vessels can also capture the energy of offshore waves. These floating platforms create electricity by funneling waves through internal turbines and then back into the sea. Built along shorelines, onshore wave power systems extract the energy in breaking waves. Onshore system technologies include the following: Oscillating water column The oscillating water column consists of a partially submerged concrete or steel structure that has an opening to the sea below the waterline. It encloses a column of air above a column of water. As waves enter the air column, they cause the water column to rise and fall. This alternately compresses and depressurizes the air column. As the wave retreats, the air is drawn back through the turbine as a result of the reduced air pressure on the ocean side of the turbine. Tapchan The tapchan, or tapered channel system, consists of a tapered channel, which feeds into a reservoir constructed on cliffs above sea level. The narrowing of the channel causes the waves to increase in height as they move toward the cliff face. The waves spill over the walls of the channel into the reservoir and the stored water is then fed through a turbine. Pendulor device The pendulor wave-power device consists of a rectangular box, which is open to the sea at one end. A flap is hinged over the opening and the action of the waves causes the flap to swing back and forth. The motion powers a hydraulic pump and a generator. Clearly, we can't keep burning carbon-based fuels.

Sorry, but 1/8th is by far the most common royalty payment in the USA and is so by a huge margin. For certain, a 50% increase over that rate is very rare. Occasionally, I will see lease agreements that include 1% or 2% over-rides but not 6.25%. Only those private mineral rights owners who happen to own minerals in areas with very good potential or have control of large contiguous tracts of land will get more than 1/8th. By far, most who hold out for more than 1/8th royalty get to settle for zero instead, and that goes for the US government as well. For the Federal government, by far the largest mineral holder in the USA, to hold out for a substantially larger royalty than is considered standard by the industry would likely amount to excessive interference of the government in interstate commerce. In regard to Yellowstone Park and the grizzlies, no oil and gas drilling is currently active in the immeadiate vicinity of the park, that I am aware and that is the business I am in. In fact, I am not aware of any drilling having occurred in that area for many years. Sounds like environmentalist or wildlife activist scaremongering to me. Most drilling is at least 50 to 100 miles away, either to the south around Rock Springs or Wamsutter, Wyoming or to the east in the Big Horn basin. Neither of these areas is likely to be grizzly territory at this time. The immeadiate Yellowstone Park area itself is not likely to have conducive geologic structures or lithology for oil and gas accumulation. However, the average American is so geographically challenged today that mentioning drilling anywhere in Wyoming probably equates to drilling next to Yellowstone Park regardless of the fact that much of the state is hundreds of miles from the park.

tricae - its both an issue of degree and future decisions. No we can't change the past. No we can't find places to live that are totally risk free. We are not talking the randomness of tornadoes in the midwest. There are places that are at risk for significant damage regularly and repeatedly and that's what we are talking about here. I think its stupid, not a word I use very often, to continue to rebuild in those areas where the risk is significant and one can pretty well determine that catastropic damage will occur again soon. I'm not sure what the threshold is -you pick one based on frequency - had to totally rebuild the house more than twice in the past 30 years? Or money - have to keep pouring money into levees that aren't going to hold, replace beach over and over and over so the house isn't in the middle of the ocean? (BTW I live near a town, Xenia OH, known as freakishly tornado prone and it can pass both these thresholds easily). How many millions if not more dollars have we spent trying to make the new New Orleans levee's better? There are already problems and no assurrances that there won't be another break. How many more millions are we going to continue to spend on a regular basis in New Orleans, that could be helping the disadvantaged elsewhere, so people can continue to live below the water line? Sure people have been living near the coast for 250 years in New England. I can't think of a time when significant areas of the coast have been evacuated on any routine or regular basis (you drove down to take those pictures, not something I would have done in Galvaston or New Orleans). But really, if the sea levels started to really encroach - are we supposed to build levees because someone's great great great grandfather lived in that old house? Things change. People move. Otherwise we'd all still be living in caves. Sure Chicago had some flooding. My mother is in Michigan and I went up to help with water in her basement. More standing water around my hometown than I've seen in a really long time. But it doesn't happen that often, - her house wasn't buried under a mudslide that happens every three years, or go up in flames every 5 years, her lot didn't disappear, and its not in an area that's costing millions to ensure that none of those things happen. As for feeling for the people in those areas. Just because we don't agree with rebuilding doesn't mean we don't care or donate to help people in time of need. I'm sure the areas that flooded in the Midwest are still struggling. A lot of people are hurting out there in many less dramatic ways. It would be nice to be able to help them.