Oklahoma City bombing prepared a first responder for the Oso mudslide

It would come to be known as one of America’s worst cases of homegrown terrorism: the Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people and injured over 300 more.

Timothy McVeigh stuffed a rental truck with bombs and blew up the Murrah Federal Building. It was an unprecedented scene of destruction, calling for a nation-wide emergency rescue response.

That included current Assistant Chief Ed Hrivnak with Central Pierce Fire. He was just 26-years-old at the time and had no experience.

“Completely overwhelmed. It took me a few moments to gather my senses and go to work because the magnitude of the destruction was overwhelming,” Hrivnak said.

He wasn’t a firefighter at the time. Hrivak was a nursing student and fresh out of the Air Force. He had extensive mountaineering and rope rescue experience, which first responders thought would be useful at the site of the bombing.

He learned everything on the job during the six weeks he was there, searching for survivors, sifting through debris, and trying to help heal a broken city.

And years later, those experiences turned out to be invaluable, when Hrivnak’s team got the call to respond to the Oso mudslide.

As a volunteer search and rescue pilot with Snohomish County, Hrivnak was one of the first on the ground.

Again, the devastation was overwhelming.

“Because I had that veteran experience with Oklahoma, I felt I was more oriented to say, OK, you need to focus on the task at hand and try not to be overwhelmed at all of this distraction that’s around you,” Hrivnak said. “And stay focused on searching for survivors, rescuing survivors, moving on to the next task, and try not to get task saturated because there are so many things going on at once.”

He and his crew rescued eight people in those early hours of the Oso disaster and continued working for the next 12 days straight.

Hrivnak wasn’t alone at Oso. Many of the rescuers leading the local response had also been in Oklahoma City.

“And I think myself and others that responded that were veterans of Oklahoma – we fared better at Oso because we had that experience behind us,” he said.

Through the horrors of Oklahoma City and Oso, the kindness of strangers has kept Hrivnak going.

He was in Oklahoma City over the weekend, 20 years later, to return the favor.

“They gave us so many thank you cards and did so many nice things for us, the kids in the schools, they were doing our laundry, making our bunks for us. We’d come back from working and there would be little thank you notes on our pillows, and roses. I want to meet some of these kids who are now adults and have some of their own kids.”