Charity leaders in Oklahoma City offer advice to September 11 workers on how to cope
After the terrorist attacks on September 11, charity officials in one American community -- Oklahoma City -- were among the first to grasp the immediate and
long-term implications that such violence would have on the nonprofit world and the people served by humanitarian groups.
Six-and-a-half years earlier, the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City’s downtown was demolished by a truck bomb.
And while the September 11 assaults clearly dwarfed the Oklahoma City bombing -- more than 4,000 people perished, compared with 168 deaths in Oklahoma -- lessons learned by charity officials in the Southwestern city have been sought and embraced by nonprofit organizations and governments up and down the East Coast.
What’s more, many observers say Oklahoma City’s efforts can be instructive to charity leaders all across the country as they review their own emergency-response plans in preparation for future threats.
Charity leaders in Oklahoma say relief workers in New York and elsewhere should expect to see spikes in the number of cases of depression, substance abuse, and domestic violence as a result of the stress the disaster has put on people’s lives. They also urge that special attention be paid to the needs of charity employees, who can themselves become victims of post-traumatic stress disorder, even years after a terrorist attack.
At least 140 families who were affected by the Oklahoma City bombing are currently receiving services from charities, and scholarship programs for local children will continue for many years.
“Some charity people think -- as we first did in Oklahoma City -- that in six months or two years it’ll all be over for them,” says Nancy B. Anthony, executive director of the Oklahoma City Community Foundation, which played a key role in coordinating nonprofit efforts after the bombing. “But I tell them that ‘long-term’ is 10 years or longer, not two.”