Narrator:
By noon Mt. Carmel was a tinderbox. A heavy layer of dried CS dust coated everything inside. Large amounts of kerosene and Coleman fuel from containers crushed by armored vehicles saturated the floor. Vapors from methylene chloride, kerosene and Coleman gas filled the air.
Narrator:
Huge holes ripped open by the tanks let the 25 mile per hour Waco wind blow completely through Mt. Carmel.
Joe Perino, Former Houston Fire Chief:
When the governmental agency made a decision to breach holes into the building, they set a configuration of a pot bellied stove. You want it to burn slow, you close off the vents. If want it to burn fast, you open it up. Well they made a configuration in that building that was consistent to a pot bellied stove. Any type of fire that would start, even if there was no CS gas, if there was no flammable liquids, if there was nothing, just ordinary combustible materials. Once you have a fire sitting in a building like that, it's going to grow to a fast rapid propagation because of the system that was set up . . . the venting,
Narrator:
At this front comer, a combat engineering vehicle has just made its last injection of CS. That small black dot is the nozzle tip, ice cold from the carbon dioxide propellant used to force the methylene chloride-CS mixture into the building. Less than a minute later, the first of three separate fires that started in three separate locations within a three minute period began here on the second floor while the fresh mixture as at its most volatile as a fine mist.
Eric R. Larsen:
Once ignited, both the CS and the methylene chloride will both become involved in the fire and add to the fire those sources will tend to produce a fire ball or a flash fire."
Narration:
Two Branch Davidian survivors say they saw fireballs. Shortly after fresh CS was injected at this comer, the FLIR shows a second tank that's pulling away. As the comer comes into view, a fire is burning there. David Thibideau says he was here and saw a fireball that ran the front length of Mt. Carmel . . . possibly igniting another fire here in the kitchen-dining room area . . . right next to the concrete room where the women and children had been gassed earlier.
Narrator:
About a minute after the front fireball Thibideau saw, another armored vehicle drives up to the rear of the crushed gymnasium and also pulls away. A few seconds later, survivor Derek Lovelock says a fireball raced from the rear of Mt. Carmel to the front igniting everything in its path.
Branch Davidian Survivor:
"At 12:00 someone yelled from the upstairs that there was a fire. The front I could not get to the front because of what the tanks had come in so I went to the stairwell in the back because I'm thinking the kids, I'm thinking Serenity Sea Jones, I was thinking of Isaiah and Joseph and some of these kids that I've come to know and love. There was a cat walk that was leading over the rafters of the church area I got to a blanket I opened the blanket up and a wall of flame shoots down the hallway in front of my face down to the other end of the building it was the loudest sound I've ever heard in my life I'm a drummer and it was incredibly loud and I could not hear anything else other than this flame."
Bill McCollum, US Congress, Florida (R):
Was there any plan for the fire to be started?
David Thibodeau, Branch Davidian Survivor:
No.
Derek Lovelock, Branch Davidian Survivor:
The place was beginning to fill up with black smoke and I stood there by the stairs and there was a kind of ball of fire that, it had tremendous heat which caused us to jump back out of the way. It came from the gym area across this way, like it came from the gym this way across our path,
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-- Page 38 --
Narrator:
It's believed the fireball Derek Lovelock said he saw started here with this flash.
Edward F. Allard, Night Vision Physicist:
That flash was so bright that the operator of the FLIR thought it was so significant that he decided to fix his cursor in that area to remind him or other people looking at the tape that there was a very significant flash in the window. When we see it in the slow motion and we see the flash it appears to be single but it is not a single flash. It's actually Two flashes we get a primary flash and a secondary flash and both of these flashes last about 1/2 second each. They are most likely detonations inside the building itself.
James G. Quintiere, University of Maryland:
Now, if some of you saw this flash here, that is a momentary event. In my opinion, that's a reflection due to sunlight reflecting off of some object in that debris.
Narrator:
Sunlight reflections would show-up as a flash on regular film which records light. But reflections don't generate enough heat, say specialists like Allard, to create a flash on infra red. Infraspection analysts noticed the same flash. Quote: "A portion of the video . . . showed a "flash", or pyrotechnic explosion in one portion of one of the buildings", end quote. Pyrotechnic devices are military munitions like flares and incendiaries that burn at extreme temperatures.
Bob Ricks, FBI Spokesman:
Non pyrotechnic delivery systems were used to insert CS gas.
Narrator:
This pyrotechnic projectile is one of two found in the rubble of Mt. Carmel. It is a 40 mm military device that is fired from a hand held grenade launcher. On impact, it burns at an extremely high temperature. This one was found here, near the comer of Mt. Carmel where the first fire started. The other was found here, in the kitchen/dining room area.
Narrator:
Twenty seconds after the two gymnasium flashes, a single flash appears here in the courtyard across from the kitchen/dining room area where automatic weapons fire was seen earlier. But this flash is longer and larger than the gun fire flashes. Its thermal signature is consistent with a grenade launcher. At the same time, still more automatic gun fire can be seen coming from the field to the left of the demolition tank.
Edward F. Allard, Night Vision Physicist:
We counted the number of gun flashes and in this particular case we got six flashes in one second which indicates it's a rapid fire weapon of some kind and we also can see from the tapes that the fire is going in this direction towards the gymnasium where we saw the flash in the window.
Jeffrey Jamar, FBI Special Agent:
When the fire did start and the fire trucks did arrive I didn't let them in. I held them at the checkpoint because I didn't want the firemen to drive into gunfire. I just wasn't going to permit it. It's a terrible thing it's a very terrible decision to have to make. But I didn't hesitate it took me about two seconds to make it we held the fire trucks.
Narrator:
Most of the remaining Davidians were concentrated here in the kitchen-dining room area. It was their only way out except for one thing: Two men outside were firing machine guns at them.
Edward F. Allard, Night Vision Physicist:
What we're seeing here is the FLIR operator is looking at the burning building. As the building start getting brighter and brighter, he adjusts his FLIR--he's turning town the brightness on his FLIR--so that he can really concentrate on the burning areas of the building. And what we're going to see in this scene is continues, uh, rapid gunfire right down in here.
Edward F. Allard, Night Vision Physicist:
These are embers that are flying off the building, but you can see up in here that this is rapid gunfire. When we analyze the tape, we found out that there's two people there in this area here. And they're firing for about thirty seconds in this area where we have the burning dining room area. And it's almost continuous gunfire. And toward the end of this particular section, we find out that the people doing the shooting are actually retreating away from the fire and shooting as they're retreating.
Narrator:
The machine gunning of the Davidians trapped in the burning kitchen-dining room was not only visible to congressional investigators, it was even visible to home viewers. So was the gunfire behind the tank smashing into the rear of the gymnasium. Neither was mentioned despite the fact the FLIR presentation to the Joint Committee had far better clarity.
Charles E. Schumer, US Congress, New York (D):
We've heard that in the fifty one days the FBI was involved, they did not fire a single shot . . . First, That would mean quite certainly that twenty seven of the people who died in the compound, I think the autopsy report showed twenty seven, I may be off by one or two, who died of bullet wounds, those were self inflicted or inflicted by other members within the compound . . .
mnsinc.com
fullcoverage.yahoo.com
Do you have some evidence to back up your belief? |
